It’s likely that a good chunk of your most recent brand interactions have involved chatbots or other AI-enabled interfaces. And if you’re an entrepreneur yourself, you also would’ve likely heard from your peers about AI’s many applications. That, or you use AI in your business already.
The technology has surged in popularity, and it’s easy to see why. AI offers a world of benefits for entrepreneurs, from increasing efficiency to enabling business growth. Want to know how the best startups are taking advantage of artificial intelligence? Read on to find out.
Efficiency has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of AI. Manual tasks that were once tedious and time-consuming can now be automated. Startups are automatically managing supply chains or handling shipments, streamlining the entire process of inventory control. They’re also improving efficiency with operations and project management. What used to be repetitive daily tasks like creating meeting reports, doing data entry, or setting up project timelines can now be automated using a variety of tools.
Automation frees up hours that would be otherwise spent on mundane or laborious tasks, instead allowing time for more complex and rewarding work.
- Product & Market Research
AI has the power to turn data and research into usable insights that can be fuel for business decisions. Startups use tools that track consumer behaviors, habits, or trends, which they use to optimize services and products to better cater to what their target market is looking for. Similarly, they also use software to analyze product trends – looking into sales histories, profitability, buyer profiles, or even competition levels. This gives startups a sense of where their offerings stand in the larger scheme of things.
Of course, taking the traditional routes of market and product research is still very important since it results in personal and accurate insights that AI might not be able to generate. However, using AI as a supplement to existing research methods has only done startups good.
- Predictive Analytics & Marketing
Knowing how to communicate with the startup consumer base has been made much simpler with AI. Certain tools use predictive analytics to identify customer profiles who are most likely to convert, while offering recommendations on how to capture them. From there, AI can optimize existing content and suggest improvements for better clickthrough rates, ROI, conversion rates, and other significant metrics.
It even allows for the automation of marketing efforts. Based on consumer profiles, tools can create tailored assets (e.g.: emailers, landing pages, digital ads) to cater to specific needs. It’s a full assistant that can lessen the load of the day-to-day marketing work, letting startup teams focus overall branding or larger campaigns.
- Enhanced Customer Services
Smarter customer service is already a popular use case of AI. From chatbots to virtual assistants, connecting with the customer has become far more efficient due to technologies like machine learning and neural language processing. The former is akin to teaching computers to learn from real conversations to make its own decisions or predictions, while the latter helps machines understand and generate human language that’s contextually correct.
As a result, customers can better engage with startups while getting faster and more tailored responses. However, it’s imperative to ensure that these tools provide relevant information, as some companies implement chatbots without maximizing their capabilities – therefore resulting in an unhelpful platform instead.
With potential security threats always looming, protecting a startup’s data and assets should be a priority. Fortunately, there are AI tools for this as well. They can conduct threat detection and prevention, analyzing data to find anomalies, security breaches, or malware. AI also has the ability to track employee usage, flagging suspicious activities for investigation. It can even be set up to have automated responses to security incidents, be it dubious logins or attempts at fraud.
All this reduces the time and resources needed to mitigate security issues, giving startups a strong foundation against threats.
- Financial & Legal Assistance
AI also has its uses when it comes to finance and legal, areas where some startups may need outside help. Financial forecasts can be generated for example, through software that analyzes existing financial data alongside current market trends. This is used by startups for accurate budgeting, funding, and keeping a closer eye on overall financials. Meanwhile, AI also proves useful for contracts. It makes legal requirements easier to understand by translating to layman’s terms and streamlines the creation of legal papers via document generation tools.
Although financial and legal matters, especially larger ones, will still need support from experts who can provide customized advice, AI can surely help with lower-level tasks that startups will have to undertake.
The New Way of Doing Business
AI has proven to be incredibly beneficial across many aspects of running a startup. It allows young businesses to take their operations to the next level, and can be used strategically to lead to success even early on. While it’s not a be-all and end-all solution to all business problems, it’s becoming an integral part of managing a company. Take it from us, as we’re also embracing AI assistance with Creative Zone’s Virtual Business Meeting. It’s an innovative tool that lets users have an interactive consultation that mirrors a real, face-to-face conversation. Enter your business preferences and our virtual advisor will give you some tailored starter advice on requirements, timelines, costs, and more.
That’s just one of many ways to adopt AI. The challenge for entrepreneurs is to properly leverage these tools to support their regular operations and growth. It’s not about using AI to replace the traditional ways of working, but about striking that perfect balance.
