Artificial Intelligence – The Business Value Behind the Buzzword

We are living in a fast-moving digital age where soundbites are the tools of choice to enable everyone to understand the benefits of complex technologies. Almost every tech article or business blog will have enough keywords to complete a game of buzzword bingo in record time. But, does this approach do more harm than good?

Many experts seem intent on informing us that the perfect partnership of blockchain, distributed ledgers, and cryptocurrencies is about to transform the world of finance. Elsewhere, it appears that strapping a headset across our eyeballs to enter the immersive world of virtual reality (VR) does not appeal to mainstream audiences. Did you see that coming?

Augmented reality (AR) is the new hero of the hour and promises to overlay data and images onto our real world. Last, but by no means least, is the perfect partnership of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that will transform businesses all over the globe. However, in all of these cases, there are many examples of companies incorporating the latest tech buzzwords to increase their value.

Want your company's share price to rocket? Just add “blockchain” to its name and sit back to watch the share price increase by 500 percent. Meanwhile, salespeople are arriving in your reception area with a pitch that will begin with either "AI is the future" or "Blockchain is the future." But, isn't it time to look beyond the buzzwords and understand exactly what is going on under the hood?

TGI Fridays recently expressed its interest in getting up close and personal with the ever-evolving digital landscape. The restaurant chain said all the right things by having big plans to engage with its customers across multiple channels and evolve with the likes of Amazon and Uber.

Predictably, a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization would open up possibilities such as voice ordering and instant payment through Amazon Pay. In a world of app fatigue, the brand is also turning to AI to improve app retention. It hopes to create personalized dining experiences, where the app knows what drink you want and what occasion guests are celebrating without being too creepy.

However, we need better education precisely on what AI is and what it is not. There appears to be an increase in the use of AI to offer a digital rebranding of traditional methods of business analytics and business intelligence. It's great to see that TGI Fridays is taking the digital transformation seriously. But how many people know the difference between traditional BI and AI? And therein lies the problem.

At IPsoft we are passionate about helping everyone visualize the business value of AI through efficiency, flexibility, and at scale to truly transform their business. When thinking about interacting with digital assistants, we need to start thinking much bigger than asking Alexa to turn on the lamp.

This is why we believe that Amelia is the most human and comprehensive AI platform on the market. But, rather than tag an AI label on as an afterthought, we feel compelled to show how AI connects conversations to data and processes to give every customer the best end-to-end experience possible.

Behind the buzzwords, enterprises want to understand how AI solves their problems and can increase the effectiveness of their operations by getting work completed more efficiently than ever before. Deploying Amelia has empowered IPsoft customers to think about innovative ways to improve business processes, customer experiences and workforce utilization.

The limitations of Amazon's Alexa are quite apparent within a few minutes of a static conversation with her. By contrast, Amelia takes interactions to another level thanks to self-learning, analytics, and episodic memory capabilities, essentially learning and adapting from every customer interaction to make them more personal and efficient in sales and service opportunities to deliver tangible results.

Any digital assistant that can only provide static suggestions is not AI in the real sense. Learning a person’s thinking and habits to offer meaningful recommendations for products or services in the proper context to give a consumer precisely what they need is where the real value is. Amelia can learn new processes once and then rapidly engage those methods to scale on-demand that is a mouth-watering concept for enterprises.

There are many bad examples of businesses exaggerating their AI capabilities, overestimating the short-term benefits and results. But, underestimating development time, limitations, and costs are starting to give AI a bad reputation in some circles. However, AI should be considered a catalyst for business transformation.

CEOs need a vision that enables them to open their eyes to entirely different business models for the future. It’s an opportunity to remove many of the constraints that limited businesses in the past and accelerate progress towards growth in the digital economy. These are just a few reasons why AI is more than just another buzzword.