Why AI needs to be in your arsenal post COVID-19

Three ways AI can support businesses to build resilience for the next phase of response to COVID-19.

Coronavirus has shaken the global economy in a way the world hasn’t seen for generations. Many industries have adopted a remote-working model, social distancing on site, or, in some cases, grounding to a complete halt altogether.

Global economic shocks of this magnitude historically cause trends to accelerate faster than they would have done under normal circumstances, causing transformation by necessity as opposed to decisions made through innovation. Change is the new normal. The sooner companies use AI and data-driven decisions to turn adversity into advantage, the sooner they will survive and thrive in a post COVID-19 world.

AI finds itself at the core of business growth and is seen as a way to revolutionise how businesses operate. With changing consumer behaviour, the need for on-demand workforces and live work environments, its place has been further cemented here pre, during and post COVID-19.

We’ll be exploring the role AI can play in supporting businesses to adapt its strategies and build resilience for the next phase of response to COVID-19.

1. The capacity conundrum: adapting to the changing workforce

One of the biggest issues businesses are currently experiencing and will continue to experience in the next phase of the pandemic is that of capacity constraints. According to recent statistics, 7 in 10 companies have been forced to furlough a portion of their workforce due to the catastrophic economic effects of the enforced lockdown on a large number of industries. Not only are companies dealing with an ever-changing workforce, but what resource is available is often geographically distributed, making traditional working environments all but extinct, creating a need to adapt to changes to traditional ways of working at pace.

AI helps to manage disruption, minimising the impact of capacity constraints through automation and data-driven tools including augmented and automated decisioning. Constrained businesses can triage tasks more effectively by using AI in a number of ways such as in chatbots to support customer service use-cases; and scoring requests and tasks to identify those that require human input, freeing resources to focus on the more complex tasks.

Here at DatasparQ, AI helped to tackle capacity constraints with one of our recent clients — a leading car park operator. They needed to make thousands of decisions a day so as to manage operations and customer communications, many of which usually required human intervention, exhausting valuable resource. We built a product that utilised machine learning to make much more accurate decisions in a fraction of the time, requiring less manual intervention while increasing customer relevance and experience.

2. Innovate, test, repeat…

Businesses will need to innovate in order to thrive post COVID-19, testing propositions rapidly to identify and scale those which best support their customers and will need to have the right tools and insights to support rapid innovation: tools to test, learn and measure the performance of different propositions, prices and promotions, and quickly.

AI has the potential to analyse data from a range of sources to identify complex patterns and trends, and better equip businesses to develop and test new propositions. Businesses that are able to test different products, propositions, promotions, prices or services will be creating a valuable asset of a rich and varied data source that can be used by machine learning models in the future. The ability to test-and-learn at scale, and use the resulting data allows businesses to get to market faster and have confidence in their propositions, is crucial at this time.

One such use case is dynamic pricing. DataSparQ built a data and analytics platform for a major UK airport, as well as establishing a new capability to test and deploy different prices quickly, generating new pricing strategies that improved revenue. These tests and new pricing strategies have provided a new data set to train a machine learning driven price optimiser that is expected to further improve revenues by over 5%. Those implementing the same tactics in a world after Coronavirus will be able to beat competitors to market while optimising how they price products for maximum return when they need it most.

3. Changing consumer behaviour

A recent report by Kantar revealed that the number of consumers making more than 50% of all purchases online has increased by 25% since March, and six out of ten of those are committed to maintaining these habits post-pandemic.

AI helps businesses to scale and manage these fluctuating and unpredictable demands through demand modelling and self-service solutions (such as chatbots). It also enables hyper-personalisation, more comprehensive recommendations depending on individual user behaviour, increasing customer engagement and sales.

With social distancing continuing to impact consumer behaviour, one example of how businesses can use AI to better adapt to changing consumer behaviour in the physical world is in the case of the world’s first AI bar. The bar uses computer vision to organise drinkers into a dynamically intelligent queue, saving staff valuable time in busy London establishments by cutting down how long it takes to serve a pint. Whilst social distancing might mean we won’t be crowding round a bar tender any time soon, this kind of solution using computer vision can be easily repurposed to help hospitality businesses monitor and encourage social distancing measures in physical environment in a post-COVID world.

Driving business forward in the wake of COVID-19

COVID-19 has caused rapid change and with that an opportunity for businesses to transform, adapt and innovate, putting data and AI at the core of their businesses. Those that do will thrive in the face of adversity. It’s certainly not all doom and gloom when it comes to the future for businesses in the UK and beyond, but the way in which companies react with AI-based contingency plans will be telling of whether or not their arsenal is fit for purpose in the wake of COVID-19.

Would you like to understand how AI can generate value for your business or help you to recover post COVID-19? Visit DatasparQ to find out more about the products we could build for you and services we offer or get in touch with a member of the team to start your AI journey today.