November 16, 2018 AI in Business: Real-World Applications You Can Use Now

The business world is now running on data, but it needs something to rein it in. Data, after all, has become big. While there are humans who are great at analyzing data, they need some help to do it at scale. Enter artificial intelligence (AI). AI in business is the key to understanding and leveraging data, and it is making its mark in several ways — including the following real-world AI use cases.

Real-time dashboards drive intelligence

AI offers businesses the insights they need to make better decisions. No matter the data or the decision that needs to be made, a dashboard is typically an effective way to convey what users need to know. For any large organization, they must depend on dashboards in order to look at different aspects at scale. For instance, take a look at how we helped Booz Allen Hamilton and the U.S. Navy with a user-intuitive dashboard in 2016.

Data can come from many different sources, both from internal and third-party systems. A cloud-based dashboard keeps everything anyone would need to know conveniently located. It could be used by a variety of users with different views, all depending on what was most relevant to their position or department.
Consider how an AI-powered dashboard could pull data from a variety of sources that may help retail companies with understanding consumer behavior. There could be point-of-sale data, loyalty card information, supplemented with data from social media. This data, with the help of AI, results in the ability to spot trends and react to them in a meaningful way.
Similarly, Topcoder helped USA Diving with a dashboard to help coaches and athletes monitor the count, type, and score of training dives. Not exactly retail, but a radical improvement to the user experience and a way to garner actionable insights through personalization.

Going further than just developing graphs or charts to show users patterns, smart programs are already making suggestions and recommendations. AI will also alert users to significant anomalies. These detections in data help companies predict the ROI for marketing in real time, along with things like customer churn and sales forecasts. AI in business is already delivering returns for organizations across all industries — be they in the private or public sector.

Sales enablement: knowing what they want before they do

Sales processes have changed dramatically with the introduction of data, and some sales teams are boosting their chances of conversions with applications that attempt to find the connection between customer intent and the realization of revenue by the brand.
In this application, AI can help automate certain tasks, like merchandising, and do this based on a predictive analysis of customer data. This takes the guesswork out of where to put what, and it works.
For example, when a customer visits an online store and searches certain terms, AI is what makes it possible to predict and automatically display related search terms. It can also display products associated with those search terms. It’s the anticipation of what a customer wants — knowing what they want before they do. So while AI in business still has a ways to go, AI already helps retailers define the preferences of their customers and take action to show them the right things at the right time.

Targeting new customers

Companies have known for some time that the path to acquiring new customers could be based off of the actions of current customers. By understanding the data of existing customers, it can help a company build a better, more targeted campaign.
Working with a global consumer electronics company, Topcoder delivered a solution enabling them to understand their how users were using their wireless music system to effectively target new customers. In just sixteen days, we analyzed over 200,000 lines of code to deliver impactful insights for their brand.
Now platforms are smarter, and data is more prolific. It only makes sense that companies would begin to use data from their current customers — not just to upsell to them, but to understand the customer journey so they know when and how to approach new customers, as well as how to retain and engage existing ones.
AI in business is just hitting its stride. Soon, it will have a powerful hand in everything from product selection to streamlining operations. If you have the data, then it’s time to give it a boost with AI. Check out our cognitive solutions and see how we can to help you turn that data into something amazing.
Also, find out what’s happening in crowdsourcing today and how it could benefit your business with a new report from Open Assembly and Topcoder.