For quite some time now, we’ve been witnessing the rise of artificial intelligence.

Just take a look around.

Search engines are getting smarter. Voice search, reverse image searches, and highly personalized search results have already become mainstream.

Tech companies are constantly competing to make their own, custom AI chips.

Intelligent personal assistants like Google’s OK Google, Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri help us get things done much faster.

Despite a lot of bad press, self-driving cars are getting more and more prominent.

Sophia, a humanoid robot, has become a robot citizen.

These are just some examples of how AI has already penetrated almost every segment of our lives and the emphasis is put on its impact on the business world.

So, let’s see what AI actually is and how it can give your B2B company a boost.

Improved Productivity

If you worry that robots will take over your job in the future, you can relax. The implementation of AI is not about replacing people with machines. On the contrary, it’s all about automating and orchestrating repetitive day-to-day tasks, allowing you to focus on creative and more important aspects of your job.

There are numerous business intelligence tools that will help you analyze your data and optimize your business operations more effectively. For example, there is a plethora of text analytics and text mining tools that convert unstructured data into valuable information, detecting mistakes and providing you with the stats needed to measure your performance.

These tools also make your data storage simpler. They help you convert your paperwork into meaningful, digital data. Not to mention that you can use numerous transcription services online to convert your massive audio files into much lighter text documents. Not only will you save a lot of space this way, but also get some invaluable client behavior insights.

AI-powered tools will replace the traditional recruitment systems, too. First, they can fully automate the hiring process, helping you find the perfect candidates effortlessly. Second, by analyzing your employee data and providing you with the tips on how to coach and engage each of them, they can boost employee retention. Most importantly, they allow HR teams and project managers to solve the organization’s internal issues more effectively. Namely, instead of answering the same question over and over again, they can use intelligent chatbots like Spoke that will handle these repetitive questions for them.

In other words, AI will automate the way you handle administrative tasks internally, saving a lot of your time. And, given the fact that businesses spend almost 1/3 of the year on administration, this would definitely mean happier employees and huge cost savings.

Boosting your Clients’ Satisfaction

The implementation of AI can make your clients happier, too.

They expect you to be available to them 24/7. They want to work with reliable businesses that are able to recognize their problems and address them instantly. That’s exactly where chatbots step in. Even though they’re still in their initial stage, they are expected to revolutionize the way customer support is dealt with.

Namely, Gartner estimated that 85% of all customer interactions will be done without a human agent by 2020. Today’s chatbots are intelligent. They’re getting constantly updated to impersonate every-day conversations more effectively and to provide your target audience with relevant answers to their questions. Above all, they will significantly minimize customer wait times, boosting their overall satisfaction with your brand.

AI can also help you collect and analyze your client data effectively, giving you the opportunity to provide them with highly targeted offers, tailored specifically to their needs. And, personalization is key to staying relevant. Statistics show that it can increase your revenue by 10%.

Safer Workplaces are Vital for B2B Companies

The number of cybercrimes rising at an astonishing pace and are predicted to cost businesses $6 trillion annually by 2021. And, B2B companies are facing an uphill battle to keep their clients’ data safe and sound.

The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence report claims that the evolution of artificial intelligence could lead to the emergence of new, more powerful hacking tools. Others, however, believe that the integration of machine learning, predictive analysis, and security intelligence into organizations may improve their security. These technologies will help you spot malware, recognize fraudulent emails, and detect any suspicious activities on your network. These sophisticated security solutions have evolved and, today, they include mobile devices, various operating systems, and different IoT devices.  

AI definitely minimizes human error, making your business’ network more difficult to hack. Still, this doesn’t mean that it can replace cybersecurity teams. Namely, even though AI can detect errors and malware, you still need people to analyze this data additionally, put them in the right context, and tell you what they really mean.  

To get the most of your cybersecurity efforts, you should find an option that will bring together the best of both worlds. Statistics show that 39% of businesses use AI-backed technologies to speed up incident detection, while 24% of them use it to help their employee understand the importance of cybersecurity in the workplace.

Are you Ready for AI?

These are still humble beginnings of AI technologies. Still, given the facts mentioned above, there is no doubt that their importance for small businesses will skyrocket in the next few years. So, leave all the speculations aside and don’t observe AI as a threat. Instead, you should consider it as an amazing opportunity to grow your business, create meaningful products and services, bring value to your customers more effectively.  

Have you already put AI to work? Where would you invest first?