Many business leaders ask me about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its usefulness for companies. Today, AI is present in all digital activity. Do you use an email solution like Gmail? AI is there and can help you write texts (suggestions for words or short sentences). Social network functions are based on AI. For example, LinkedIn AI suggests text to answer questions or people to follow who are relevant to you and your professional activity. You will also find AI in the management of your community on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. When using a management or accounting tool, the AI algorithms will suggest accounting line assignments for your invoices or expenses. If your company uses a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for your sales or finance departments, AI is in use there too. So, we have started to get used to the ease of AI and are taking advantage of the benefits of AI as it helps us save time and work more efficiently.
Whether you work in a large, medium, or small company, AI will allow you to manage your business differently in order to focus on what is most important, your customers. Tedious, time-consuming, and uninteresting tasks will be managed by algorithms in so-called intelligent applications. Often, I offer my clients a digital transformation activity that allows companies to manage processes in different ways. The digital transformation activity that puts AI at the heart of your activity is not only a transformation of tools but a powerful form of change management. In the same way as people over 50 years old today had to manage the transition to IT a few years ago, companies are now implementing data management strategies that will allow the development of AI algorithms. Most of this data will be stored in the cloud and will allow immediate access no matter where you are and at lower operating costs because it will be based on demand and usage.
After looking at the benefits that exist today, whether you are consciously aware of them or not, let’s take a closer look at the benefits that you will be able to derive from your digital transformation activity.
At the accounting level, for example, you have had customer, supplier, and employee data for many years. This data is stored and organized but not analyzed. The AI algorithm will allow you to search for the relevant data (which you will choose) and analyze this data in order to get predictive analytics which will become more and more reliable as time goes by.
In terms of human resources, AI algorithms will allow you to follow your employees since their first contact with the company by combining publicly available information on social networks and your internal information since their start of employment. Who are they really? How long do they generally stay in a job (which will allow you to be proactive and offer training or a new position if you have noticed they tend change employer regularly)? Which environment works best for this or that individual? You will have a more relevant, productive, and personal HR policies because you will know much more about each employee and will thus be able to interact in a more knowledgeable way.
Finally, at the marketing and commercial level, we talked above about AI in CRM (Customer Relationship Management). These CRM tools with AI will allow salespeople to become more efficient because the algorithms will be able to define, for example, when a prospect is more inclined to order (seasonally) or is more receptive to a call. Based on data you have today in your business, we can analyze when a salesperson is at top performance, which approach he uses works best and which products will be most suited to his/her prospects or clients. The same is true for marketing which will be able to deliver more targeted, efficient, and personalized campaigns, again based on data that you have and that will be analyzed quickly and effectively.
Regularly, my clients tell me that they already have this knowledge based on their salespeople or accountants’ years of experience and market understanding. This is absolutely true. Nevertheless, AI will allow an increase in individual and team performance because it analyzes billions of data at speeds that the human brain cannot compete with. AI algorithms will make it possible to increase human potential, not to replace it and thus will allow optimized management of the company. You will then be able to focus on what you do best … growing your business!