Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here, and it's here to stay! Today, the impact of AI is felt across diverse domains and industries including R&D, corporate functions, customer service, production, supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, sales, customer service, and marketing to name a few. No wonder, Artificial Intelligence is steadily improving process efficiency, crossing manmade hurdles, and automating conventional practices while ensuring increased accuracy and productivity.
So what is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial intelligence can be described as an umbrella term that includes a range of technologies such as natural language processing, deep learning, machine learning, computer vision, and more. At their core, all of these out-of-the-box technologies assist machines to perform specific cognitive tasks better than or as well as humans. For instance, your favorite voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa can understand your words and then respond in kind, all using Artificial Intelligence. Similarly, Netflix and Amazon leverage recommendation engines to provide up products, services, and movies you might like by making assumptions about your preferences.
That's because Artificial intelligence isn't just automation, though it does include the elements of intelligent automation. The tools of AI take things a few steps further. They analyse large datasets and don't just crunch numbers. AI technologies leverage superior computational firepower and advanced computer science techniques to extract insights from data.
Organisations can leverage Artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency, productivity, and end results of their sales and marketing teams. The potential of AI can be utilised to benefit processes, spot potential issues, and better manage schedules. If this is not all, the predictive power of Artificial intelligence at an even more advanced level can be employed to analyse ‘What-If’ scenarios and even plan for contingencies during the course of project execution.
Approaching AI
Artificial intelligence, as a wide field, can be approached through different angles:
Process Automation: Robotic process automation of common physical and digital tasks (such as identification of leads, automating marketing campaigns, etc.).
Cognitive Insights: Detecting patterns via large data volumes and interpreting their meaning (detect real-time transparency, predictive analysis, accurate modelling, and identifying safety or quality issues).
Cognitive Engagement: Artificial intelligence can be leveraged to nurture smart engagement with employees and other important stakeholders (including customers, suppliers, vendors, clients, and subcontractors). It can also be aimed at servicing functions that otherwise require human involvement (responding to common queries, technical support functions, supply chain recommendations, etc.).
Data Analytics: Data collection, organisation, interpretation, and transformation can be leveraged to make predictions, draw conclusions, and drive informed decision-making.
The result?
Technology empowered and enriched by Artificial intelligence gets better over time, often without human involvement. For instance, a typical non-AI sales and marketing system will only rely on human inputs to work. It will be hard-coded by people with stringent rules. But, AI tools can improve on their own when the machine starts assessing its own performance and new data.
For instance, a marketing AI tool may create subject lines for you. The tool's machine learning ability is empowered by humans using existing samples of an organisation's marketing copy. Over time, the machine can get better with little or no human involvement to unlock possibly unlimited performance potential.
Now just imagine the capabilities of AI getting applied to any sales or marketing technology that leverages data. Artificial intelligence can be deployed to make everything, from content to analytics to advertisements, more intelligent. In other words, AI sophisticated AI can smartly and quickly analyse prospect and customer data. It can then be used to predict which prospects are most likely to close, what are the best ways to cross-sell and upsell, and what would be the most important sales actions to take.
If you're a sales or marketing manager or a business owner, Artificial Intelligence can help you increase revenue and reduce costs at the same time. That means now is the time to get started with Artificial Intelligence to build a competitive advantage and avoid the risk of getting left behind.
Call C.I.G Consultants to gain the definitive competitive edge now!