11/14/2019 5 ways to enhance your business using AI - venkat k - Medium

5 ways to enhance your business using

AI
venkat k
Nov 14 · 5 min read

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming a competitive tool in business. Companies

have been discussing the pros and cons of AI in the past. From enhanced chatbots to
customer service to data analytics to recommendations, deep learning and artificial
intelligence are seen as an important tool for business leaders in their many forms.

It puts AI on a shortlist of technologies your company needs to look at but actively

explores how to benefit. It joins leading emerging technologies such as machine
learning, cloud computing, and Big Data.

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If you’re not sure that AI is ready to handle a growing number and range of tasks,
consider IBM’s Watson’s 2011 winning performance in Jeopardy. Or consider different
ways in which you are already using AI-enabled devices and services in your personal
life, such as smart assistant apps or devices like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. Not to
mention other AI-supercharged apps like the GPS app that you use while driving.

Here are some suggestions on how your competitors are already using AI in their
business and how to get on board.

Considering how your competitors are using AI

The odds are you can’t call your competitors and ask how they are using AI in their
organization. But thanks to the internet, you can find out a lot about what they said. For
example, web search “how staples are using AI” yields information from how the
company leverages artificial intelligence technology to work for it. Next, check out your
competitors’ websites and social media presence (especially LinkedIn and Facebook).
Browse their press releases, news coverage, and blogs. You can also go old school and get
any hard copy newsletters, annual reports or other literature from last year that aren’t
available online.

Make a wide net with industry search, such as “how hospitals are using AI”, “grocery
stores are using AI” or more general search. For example, when I searched for “using AI
in my business”, I had various successes when talking about business uses for AI:

1.Improve customer decision management

2. Improve QA for software and manufacturing
3. Write the code
4. Read Medical Imaging as Head CT Scans.
Another suggestion: Investigate how AI is using other parts of your supply chain —
components, shipping, support and the like.

Decide what AI can do for your business

Based on your research, you should be able to create a list of what AI can do for
businesses in general and for companies in your industry.

You will find several main areas:

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1. AI technology types such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language

processing, and cognitive computing. Understanding what these are, and how
different types of data and tasks are good, will help you gain a better understanding
of AI and understand the needs and limitations of different goals.

2. Any type of processing AI, such as image and speech recognition, predictive
analytics, can be used. It gives you a general sense that AI is being used not only by
businesses but also by government, education, science, and other researchers and
others.

3. Use cases: Smart agents (for phone, chatbots, and more), these capabilities help
with any specific tasks, such as optimizing inventory orders, acting out machine or
system failures, detecting computer threats, and detecting fraudulent customer
activity.

Search for and Compare Vendors

It is time to identify potential technology vendors. There is no shortage of top artificial

intelligence companies.

To find and compare vendors, you first need to evaluate how to add artificial intelligence
capabilities to your company’s IT, based on:

1. The size and depth (and budget) of your IT staff. Do you already have any AI
expertise at home? Are there developers (besides QA and Ops) that can add AI
chops? Do your IT staff have the time and resources to add AI to your current
business IT? To research, propose and develop new AI-based business programs.

2. Do any of your IT providers offer AI extensions, modules, tools, features, etc?

There are several categories of vendors for AI capabilities:

1. Vendors who have added AI capabilities to their offerings. It includes everyone from
Amazon, Apple, and Google to IBM, Intel, and Salesforce, so you have to decide if
you want to do this with your own / purchased hardware or cloud resources (or
both).

2. Vendors with specific AI capabilities accessed through APIs or other methods.

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Implement the AI Project

The real fun begins once you identify your initial AI projects: implementation. Important
Milestones:

First, you need to create a plan outlining specific and common goals, milestone
schedules, hard and soft costs, and resources needed, including people’s skills,
hardware, and software.
1. Identify who will be affected, including existing resources, suppliers,
customers/customers. In addition to adding a negative impact during execution, find out
who benefits.
2. Set goals for project purposes. Determine how to measure results and, if possible, how
to compare A / B to an AI-enabled approach and previous methods.
3. Don’t forget to talk to stakeholders, including customers/customers. Ask for their
thoughts, priorities, and advice along with training documents and session plans as they
prepare for trials and operational reforms.

Challenges and Pitfalls to Avoid

Adding AI to your company’s operations and business is a big change and a big
transformation. Here’s some quick advice to ease the challenges:

Understand how the AI you are buying works. What are its strengths? Weakness?

What kind of IT environment does AI need? More RAM? New hardware-level

virtualization? Going to NVMe or a different memory or I / O like hyper-converged
infrastructure?

Are you giving your AI apps more data? Too little? Wrong data? Are you asking them the
right questions?

Look for AI tools that give clear, actionable warnings or other results rather than endless
pages of mostly insignificant results.

Additionally, focus on the AI that is available as a supported product/service, rather than

under development.

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Future trends
Although AI in the field of computer science dates back to the 1950s, in the last decade,
many forms of AI have become available to companies of all sizes.

This is thanks to factors such as hardware cost/performance improvements, cloud

computing and advances in AI techniques. At the same time, computing trends such as
big data, IoT, self-driving vehicles and speech and image recognition are creating more
“targets” to represent AI tools.

In particular, keep an eye on cloud costs and capabilities in addition to what AI-wise
different players are doing or talking about. Like almost everything associated with
computer technology, the next cool capabilities are neither very anticipated nor able.
Bottom line: Talk to experts in your field — nothing will help you much.

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