AI in Small Business – The silver bullet for brand equity growth

Given the disruptive potential, almost every big business organization has made Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) the central pillar of their digital transformation efforts. However, even small businesses can benefit immensely by embracing an AI and ML-driven intelligent operating approach. The following are reasons why start-ups and small business organizations should no longer ignore incorporating AI/ML as a critical component within their digital strategy.

Improves accuracy of decision-making

There are four reasons why AI/ML-enabled decision-making is bound to be superior than relying purely on human abilities:

• AI/ML systems execute electronically, which gives them an almost 100% computational accuracy – something that humans would never be able to achieve

• Such systems comprise of self-learning models which continuously learn as they receive more inputs and intelligently adapt their responses
• They execute without any bias as against humans who will come with several biases as part of their fundamental nature
• They are very fast in their computation and analysis as opposed to humans

When a business is small, the margin for error when it comes to making decisions is minimal – a wrong decision could hurt a small company to a significant degree.

Smarter Marketing Moves

Machine learning helps businesses to transform their marketing strategy in the following ways:

• AI helps conduct market research and allows businesses to investigate their target market segments more thoroughly to understand their needs and preferences.
• The use of customer journey analytics combined with ML can help deliver a personalized experience on web and mobile platforms, resulting in more intimate customer engagement.
• AI can help predict the success prospects of various marketing strategies and demand forecasting.

• AI-enabled Marketing Technology (MarTech) helps execute pre-planned marketing campaigns on an auto-pilot mode.
• The use of ML-enabled chatbots serves as an excellent substitute for human executives in delivering preliminary customer service. Since a small business would have a limited team size, this would be highly beneficial when expanding the customer base.

Because small businesses would not have the luxury of a huge marketing budget, they must maximize the effectiveness of their marketing strategy – something that AI/ML would help them achieve.

Automating monotonous tasks

Repetitive tasks can get boring for human employees, and more importantly, there is also the possibility of human error. By leveraging Robotic Process Automation (RPA), small businesses can set themselves up from a very formative stage to forge a culture of operational efficiency maximization. This can ensure that they optimize their spending on salaries while ensuring that the employees have a rewarding experience while at the office. Thus, machine learning can be the pillar for operational intelligence and agility for small businesses.

Improved Recruitment and HR Strategy

The quality of personnel recruited during the early stages of a business determines its future growth trajectory. It is essential that this recruitment is free of bias and the best resources with the requisite skills and temperament are recruited. AI/ML can help achieve this by sifting through applications received for various job roles to identify the most suitable candidates. Moreover, once recruited, an AI-powered learning management system can go a long way in getting new employees to be job-ready. Additionally, AI could also be employed to guide HR managers in performance evaluation and determine salary hikes and promotion eligibility objectively.

Enhanced Security of Digital Assets

As much as modern-day businesses need to have a solid online presence, it is equally important to focus on information and network security. Today, cybercriminals use sophisticated approaches for hacking into systems and extracting confidential information or conducting banking frauds. By using AI and ML integration within your IT systems, you can ensure that your systems can actively lookout for the most recent security bugs and malicious bots and protect your enterprise application from them. Moreover, in the case of an unfortunate data breach, AI would help identify the violations in time and take timely actions to minimize damage.

The above points highlight how machine learning and artificial intelligence helps businesses. It is amply clear that small business owners would be well-advised to build their strategies centered around a judicious use of AI and ML.