Top 9 Ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) can Boost Business Productivity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is hailed as the next big thing after mechanization. Mechanization improved productivity in factories and farms and gave more leisure time to people. Artificial Intelligence is expected to take care of routine, repetitive tasks so that humans can use their brains for creative purposes. Competition is hot and businesses must aim at reducing costs and improving productivity. Investment in AI is expected to exceed $ 191 billion by 2025. Virtually all the big names like Google, Intel, IBM and Amazon have massively invested in AI developments for various purposes.

These days, AI has helped to simplify the processes involved in most production industries; from decision making to production processes. This has led to better results that are very accurate. Here, we take a look at the top 9 ways artificial intelligence leads to productivity increases.

9 Ways AI can Boost your Business Productivity

Reduction of repetitive, routine, boring tasks

Imagine a scenario in which an employee has to wade through pages of documents to find relevant text. Now take something like Amazon’s technology in which an employee can speak to the computer to perform some tasks like finding and collating data from various documents. The same employee may make use of translation to translate documents or to convert text to speech.

Take the case of Microsoft that has extensively implemented AI in its Skype, Office 365, Dynamics, Azure and Cortana. Building apps in Azure becomes fast and relatively free of errors so you can get to market faster. Cortana can be used to initiate web searches. An employee only has to talk into a microphone. Take IBM’s Watson. Ask a question and it gives you answers from its database.

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Intelligent CRMs

SalesForce integration of MetaMind is just one example of how an intelligent CRM will improve speed and efficiency of customer support, marketing automation, campaign design and implementation. With so much smartness built into the CRM marketers will be free to focus on more important aspects like analysis and trends. If there is a doubt they can query the system and receive recommendations. Users of existing CRMs can simply get AI developers on board to make it “smart” and boost productivity of their sales, customer service and marketing teams.

Forecast demand with precision

The AI market is expected to grow at a rate of 52% and with good reasons. Sales, marketing, production and management can spend hundreds of hours worrying about and discussing about demand and production. In the process they get less work done. The wrong decisions can lead to excess inventory, wrong products being chosen or delay in reaching markets. Enter AI with machine learning to create various mathematical models that take care of analysis and predictions.

Time and effort saving for everyone

People do not work in isolation. While team collaboration is necessary for certain tasks, it is also an impediment. For instance, an employee may be working on something. That employee’s work is interrupted frequently because others ask questions to which he must give answers or provide information. It is an irritant. AI, in these scenarios, can help each team member get the information they need without having to disturb their colleagues. It is not just office environments that benefit by AI automation; it can be used in warehouses to identify, classify and categorize inventory.

AI can automate purchases and procurement. It works in manufacturing to predict likely machine failure and prevent expensive breakdowns. The result is all round productivity gains.

Let chatbots handle customers

IVRs are dumb when it comes to handling customers and act as a buffer between customers and customer service agents in the business but the shortcomings of the IVR could have a negative impact. Go one up and incorporate chatbots with intelligence to interact with customers. Bots take the burden off the shoulders of employees not just in areas of customer service but also in other internal matters such as scheduling meetings, processing orders and so on. Your employees are freed from tiresome, irksome and fatiguing tasks that reduce efficiency.

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Your HR department functions better

Recruitment is a lengthy, intricate and skewed process when handled by humans. Can you afford to wait to have the best candidate to fit an urgent vacancy? Human recruiters can take hours and days to scrutinize resumes and pick a candidate that fits the slot and even then their choices are colored by personal preferences. Switch to AI powered HR solutions and recruitment becomes a breeze. The system selects the best candidate from internal data base or from fresh resumes and pin-points the best candidates. It helps with onboarding too.

Your HR personnel can focus on more relevant and productive tasks. With AI in place you do not have to worry about hiring the wrong candidate who will stay and then leave or under perform or become a cause of friction with other employees. AI greatly eases the HR burden and by getting the right employees you are already off to a good start. AI can help them to do even better when they encounter it and use it in their work.

Intelligent data analytics and reporting for decision making

Management usually takes crucial business decisions based on data. The usual system would be to rely on a team of IT professionals to process data and derive reports and then try to take decisions based on the analytic report. IT professionals and management may not be on the same page and that could possibly lead to wrong interpretation. The simple workaround is to choose artificial intelligence endowed analytics platform for business intelligence.

Today’s advanced solutions not only analyze and present data in visual form but even make recommendations on possible course of action. Instead of spending hours cogitating on decisions the management team can take quick accurate decisions and implement them fast.

Better training and brain power

When you engage employees in mundane and boring tasks they tend to switch off their brains and work mechanically. Before long you have a bunch of zombies working in your company. This happens because they are stuck and cannot look forward to climbing up the ladder. Let AI based systems handle the routine tasks and then use AI in training programs to transform static employees into dynamic ones. Studies show that when incorporated into training, AI helps trainees remember better and improve brain power. They become thinking individuals committed to doing more and gaining satisfaction from better performance with attendant rewards.

Give each employee a personal AI assistant

Everyone can do with a little bit of help and assistance, especially when at work. Since you already have implemented artificial intelligence to take care of mundane tasks, it becomes an easy enough matter to give each employee their own personal artificial intelligence assistant. Individual performance goes up and that adds to collective productivity gains.

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Conclusion

It is worth noting that artificial intelligence is already built into packages that you use such as SalesForce CRM or Microsoft Dynamics. However, for the best outcome it is a good idea to call in artificial intelligence development experts to assess existing solutions for AI integration and also assess your existing workplaces and methods of working. Once you have a unified AI implementation it will prove much better at enhancing productivity. The AI solution provider will also take care of training employees on how to make efficient use of artificial intelligence as a work aid. AI is not the future: it is here and the time to go for it is now.

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Is there any other way AI is helping you boost productivity in your industries? I will like to hear it the comment section.

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