What You Can Lose If You Ignore Machine Learning & AI Technologies?
In this post, we explain the basic concept of machine learning and what applications can be drawn from the technologies to facilitate various business processes.
What is Machine Learning?
It’s a technique that uses a combination of data (lots of data) and algorithms to capture, sort and analyze data and produce inferences that would otherwise be impossible to deduce because of the limitation of human capabilities.
Imagine going through a library of 1 million books on sales & marketing and picking up what kind of things drive your potential customers! Imagine if you had to do it in a matter of days, not even weeks! Sounds terrifying & impossible. Right?
Machine learning technologies do this on an every day basis. The best part is the more data you feed to a machine learning algorithm, the better it gets.
Though it’s a nightmare for data scientists to cite differences in various technologies, in general, when the normal humans talk of machine learning, they mean either or all of them — artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine intelligence (predictive modeling, recommendation engines, sentiment analysis), and natural language processing.
Why Machine Learning?
Isn’t this just another buzzword? Would businesses even be using this technology in next five years? By 2022, 80% of them will be. The automation of tasks will help on more than one level. Here’s how.
1. Automation of workforces
Automation is good for business. ML powered computers & bots work faster, better & are cheaper. Even the activities that need cognitive skills, earlier considered unique to humans, can be automated through machine learning.
- Predictive modeling can be used to assess the data to make customer personas.
- Sentiment analysis can be used to interact with employees & gauge employee satisfaction.
- ML-based research assistants can be used to predict market trends & patterns.
According to Mckinsey (Source), automation of workforces can improve performance, speed, quality, and about 0.8–1.4% productivity growth annually.
Over $15trillion annually can be saved through such automation.
2. Better Marketing & Sales
On our blog on hurekatek.com, we have discussed several possibilities of how machine learning technologies can improve, assist and guide the sales & marketing team of a business.
It’s not only Facebook & Google that are generating billions of dollars using this technology. Even retail brands like Amazon, Sephora, Tommy Hilfiger are making more money due to the products developed using the technology.
Looking at big brands and the Fortune 500s investing heavily in machine learning, you’re bound to question whether a small business can ever compete with these. For an answer, you only have to look at the amount of AI-startups that are being funded by VCs these days.
It’s your data that makes you unique and gives you an edge over your competition, no matter how big & powerful it is.
3. More Engaged Employees
$7 trillion is lost every year due to lazy employees who cannot care enough about the business they’re working for. (Source)
The problem is you never even recognize such employees as they’re working properly, giving you results but still not utilizing their full potential.
The crisis can actually be averted if only you had HR resources to have regular one on one interactions with the employees, get their feedback and help them feel like an important part of the company.
Machine learning solutions can be deployed to perform such HR tasks leading to better employee retention and satisfaction.
4. Emotion Gauging
Analysing public opinion in 2012 presidential elections was one of the best strategies used in President Barack Obama’s campaign (source).
Knowing the public opinion about your product & business can make the difference between a dud product and a bestseller. For retail & food sector, it’s the best as product planning is often influenced by demand and trends.
5. Time-Saving Through Predictive Modeling
With no human intervention, it’s possible to gather and analyze data. Utilizing this data, business owners can make better decisions, more profits and have more satisfied customers.
In practice, it’s really hard to list down all the ways machine learning can help small businesses. But for starters, think of any repetitive process involving lots of data and ML can help make it easier and more efficient.
If you’re a small business owner wondering how machine learning can help your business function better, call us for a free consultation here.
