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Role of AI in a Startup Ecosystem

December 4, 2019

AI for small business startups

Artificial Intelligence has personified technological advancements across various verticals. To name a few, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, and finance industries have a lot of potential to harness the power of AI with enterprise solutions like ERP.

How can one not imagine self-driven cars, robots and devices that functions through voice control methods while thinking of Artificial Intelligence? Since its inception, all that people have pictured of AI is a miraculous technology just like those Steven Spielberg movies; something magical that rests in future and is yet to parade its efficacy.

No doubt, AI is all of the above and is yet to reach its maturity, but what we should know today is that its optimum potential is far beyond our imagination. Despite the fact that developers need to maneuver the unrealized power of Artificial Intelligence, it has considerably evolved so far. As an evidence, a lot of companies from start-ups to large-scale are already harnessing its capability to scale rapidly.

There are a number of problems start-ups face right from making informed decisions to offering world-class customer service. While the brand struggles through the process of creating its unique identity, even a single loophole can scar the entire image forever. Newcomers cannot afford goof ups as it leaves no room for them to be trusted again. All these challenges can be addressed accurately through Artificial Intelligence.

AI technology

AI-Powered Functionalities for Start-Ups

Customer Service

As per the Gartner Research, AI will contribute 15% to all the customer service interactions in 2021, which is a 400% rise compared to 2017. Unlike previous times, customers no longer connect with brands based on their quality and price, but the service they are offered. If the companies do not match the ever-increasing customer demand, they are long gone in the battlefield already. AI powered bots offer a prompt response to customer queries. Pre-fed algorithms fetch required data like basic contact information, preferences and analyze issues. With a strong AI powered chat bot on customer front, your business is can entice visitors and prospects in further brand engagement. Create conversion specific sales funnel through a CRM software and deploy AI-based chat bots at multiple touch points to enhance conversion rate.

Accenture forecasted how AI will impact a company’s customer engagement, enhance its competitiveness, and drive business growth by strategically adjusting customer service system and increasing focus on AI technology implementation.

AI customer service impact

The source: accenture.com

Decision Making

AI can process humongous amount of data to form predictive analysis in order to help brands make more informed decisions. Access to detailed data like customer preferences, buyer personas, buying patterns, and most engaging time slot will help companies devise better marketing strategies, choose appropriate medium and contemplate the best cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Business opportunity

Business Forecasting

Based on neural network advancements, AI is now a maximizing the avenues of making predictive analysis. Using business forecasting, companies can identify past buying trend and create a more accurate demand and supply graph to ensure they are not sunning out of inventories or resources. For example, for an automotive industry, when floor managers have quick access to which parts or components were in major demand over a certain period of time, can actually give them insights to form a future demand trend. In that case, it will be easier to stock the inventories beforehand than facing shortage later. This will help in building an enhancing customer service and earn some brownie points.

Marketing Automation

Top brands are using AI to elevate their marketing efforts. Netflix uses AI and machine learning to personalize content recommendations to its users based on their choices rather than preferences. This helps the brand to connect with its customers closely and persuade their decisions to its own benefit. Without compromising on the quality of the image, the AI compresses individual video frame to a required degree. As a result, over 80% of Netflix users choose content to watch based on the brand recommendations.

Data Security

Artificial Intelligence is capable of identifying users with negative intentions even before they plan to act. Based on past suspicious activities and data trends, AI and machine learning predicts cyber-attacks before they occur. With current cyber-attacks becoming more sophisticated in nature, it is difficult to identify the potential threats through malware infected websites. In a report produced by Norton, it is realized that data breach can cause a company a hefty amount and over 6 months of time for recovery. Hence, when it comes to data security, start-ups can surely rely on AI.

The Takeaway

To sum it up, Artificial Intelligence is capable of producing magnifying scalable and profitable opportunities for start-ups. Not only it is convenient to automate repetitive tasks through AI, but also produce smarter analytical and predictive solutions just like humans. Start-ups can harness the potential of AI in manifold ways like offering a world-class customer service, making informed business decisions, anticipating the future demand-supply trends, automating marketing efforts, and tightening the data security even more. Hence, it is advisable for start-ups to identify eclectic ways in which AI could help them augment their businesses.

Kalyani Chaudhari

BY

Kalyani writes about upcoming technologies like big data, machine learning, virtual reality, AI and robotics. Her expertise lies in growing the business opportunities by market qualified lead generation through inbound and outbound practices, majorly focusing on content. Kalyani works for Sage Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a leading provider of ERP and CRM software to small and mid-sized businesses in India.

You can learn more about her on Twitter | LinkedIn

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