How To Implement Artificial Intelligence In Your Business?

Today we live in a world surrounded by Artificial Intelligence. From SIRI to ride-hailing applications, autocorrect as well as our phone’s facial recognition feature — it has come about to become a way of life. What once used to be a buzzword has entered the corporate domain. Rest kept aside, Artificial Intelligence is playing an ever more important role in business and has lately gained the label of being the ‘future of business.

But let’s first understand what it is. Although there are several takes on it, I settled for the one by Amazon which builds a lot of its business on machine-learning systems (widely used sub-domain of AI)

“AI is the field of computer science dedicated to solving cognitive problems commonly associated with human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and pattern recognition.”

With Artificial intelligence growing rapidly, it encompasses anything from Google’s search algorithms to IBM’s Watson to autonomous weapons. It is impossible to deny that artificial intelligence has made life easy by saving us loads of time, money, and energy. Let’s get answers as to, Why is Artificial Intelligence an inevitable need for your business?

1. Increases employee productivity by automating the routine activities at work
2. Improves marketing activities by generating and analyzing the available data to get insights into customer needs
3. Acts as an efficient alternative for manual systems that saves time, and money
4. The Top-notch intelligence amplifies accuracy by ruling out the possibility of human error
5. Helps in achieving the best business results through progressive learning algorithms that allow companies to deliver personalized solutions

In the current era, several companies have made a quick jump to AI. No doubt, it has transformed its business operations to drive maximum benefits. The best example being Netflix, leveraging on the power of AI to kick out its competitors. According to Linkedin’s informative article How Netflix uses AI and Data to conquer the world

“Netflix not only has the largest worldwide subscriber base of any business but managed to keep growing it by +25% last year(ie.2017). Its market capitalization competes head to head with Disney, the most-valued entertainment company in the world.”

For a long-time, I wondered, What’s the reason behind such phenomenal success?

The secret is out — It is the successful integration of deep learning and machine learning into almost every avenue of their business. The most used cases of AI integration at Netflix can be seen in the Homepage, Thumbnails, the streaming quality, and the tailored movie recommendations.

Now that you’re aware of the potential let’s take a look at the step-wise guide on how to successfully implement AI in your business.

Implementing Artificial Intelligence in your business

STEP 1: Familiarize with the concept of AI

If you are keen on introducing AI in your business, start by learning the basic concepts which can help you understand how modern AI works. There is a huge store of resources out there that can aid your learning about the various sub-domains of AI such as — Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing, Computer vision, and Cognitive Computing and their related industrial applications. This comprehensive understanding gives you a head start on deciding which technology to use.

STEP 2: Identifying your business needs

Once you have the basics in place, it’s time to delve into the problem areas. It is crucial to point out the domains that need improvement or identify the existing products and services whose potential can be doubled upon introducing AI capabilities. This short homework schedule can simplify the final decision-making process for your company.

STEP 3: Prioritizing the long-term business value

Assessing the potential business and financial benefits of your AI project; is as important as any other aspect of your AI integration journey. Hence, you must consider all the segments of AI implementation and tie them up with concrete returns. Make parameters such as customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and increased business results the center of the measuring criteria to categorize and map the short-term and long-term goals. However, keep in mind that what may be a trend today might lose its charm tomorrow so choose AI-based solutions that have a long-term impact.

STEP 4: Evaluating team capabilities and requisite effort to bridge the gap

One major thing to consider is the existing gap between the current organizational capability and the goal to be achieved within a given time frame. This can guide you in prioritizing the best approach that can work the best for the AI execution strategy. Depending on the need you can — either build an alternative solution using internal resources, buy a ready-made product, collaborate or outsource the entire AI development process. It is the key to finding the most effective yet cost-effective approach.

STEP 5: Consulting an expert for the Plan-of-action

Put together a team of talents from the internal team with a domain specialist to kickstart the project. Inputs from the expert can allocate appropriate skills to the right job, streamline workflow to develop the pilot project in the least possible time. As we all know, with the right team in place, any impossible task can be turned into a reality.

STEP 6: Getting started with data integration

The initial step to getting started with the integration process includes incorporating high-quality, clean data for the AI algorithm to learn from. So, a cross-department team is put together to procure information, check for accuracy, clear out incoherent parts, and finally integrate the data sets for the targeted task performance. The data sets need to be periodically organized and updated to maintain high functionality. That’s not all, do not forget to build a robust security infrastructure that can protect the prepared data.

STEP 7: Launching on a small scale

By now you are ready to start. As always try to start with a small sample data set and see how the technology unfolds for your business. This ensures your stay in the risk-free zone and aids in gathering the early lessons which can terminate the chances of future costly mistakes.

STEP 8: Incorporating AI in different segments of work

Once you make your way through the small wins, you are set to roll it out on a larger scale. The gathered insights can guide you in altering the current strategy and taking your working model a notch higher. Additionally, you can automate several aspects so that it adds to employee efficiency and boosts returns.

STEP 9: STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE AT THE WORKPLACE

The right balance is the center of any project including that of the AI integration program to keep it growing and evolving. The planning team needs to build an optimized storage system, Graphics processing unit (GPU), and security safeguards well in advance to keep the system running. Additionally, financial considerations for hardware flexibility and tackling unexpected hurdles need to be taken into account to tackle possible challenges that may arise.

Article References:

https://in.pcmag.com/tableau-desktop/111539/10-steps-to-adopting-artificial-intelligence-in-your-business

https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/what-is-artificial-intelligence/

https://www.businessworldit.com/ai/artificial-intelligence-in-business/

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/how-to-make-ai-work-for-your-business

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text above belong solely to the author, and don’t reflect views of the author’s employer, organization, committee, or other group or individual.