The rise of artificial intelligence is often referred to as the third industrial revolution. To stay up to date, modern businesses need to create an AI strategy. The trouble is, most business owners have no idea where to begin.
In fact, many people assume that AI is basically science fiction.
These days, there are countless simple ways to improve your business with the help of AI. From utilising existing tools to automating processes, AI has massive potential to cut costs and boost revenues for your business.
Today, we’re going to delve into how you can create an AI strategy to take advantage of this, especially in your sales, marketing and digital efforts.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is an AI Strategy?
An AI strategy involves utilising artificial intelligence to benefit your business. In other words, it is how AI impacts the development and maintenance of strategy in a company or industry. This cuts across just about every possible business function.
However, due to AI strategy being unfamiliar territory, many ethical and moral issues have arisen. The main objective of any AI strategy is to combine humans and machines to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace.
However, many software experts claim that businesses should not jump ahead into AI right away. Because it is a huge commitment and a new area of work, many companies should take a calculated approach and figure out whether AI strategy is the right next step for them.
A company must consider the risk they are taking with this strategy. They should also consider if they have the right risk management plan to accompany it. It will also require a lot of work to ensure maximum results.
At least, it would if you wanted to build and develop your own artificial intelligence. However there are a number of off-the-shelf solutions which can bring an element of AI to various tasks, such as email marketing, workforce management, and even writing.
How AI Strategy Works: How to Develop Artificial Intelligence
You might be surprised to learn that the most common AI strategy is the use of chat-bots for customer service. Generally, this involves using inexpensive pre-built tools. At most, this requires a small amount of customisation to suit your brand.
This speaks to a crucial point.
That is, that there are plenty of tools out there which make AI accessible to just about anyone, with very little cost or effort. This is a massive change from even a few years ago, when AI was the reserve of brands with massive marketing budgets.
An AI strategy gives digital marketing departments less cause for guesswork and more room for analytical facts. In digital marketing, the team has the task of understanding their audience and their reactions to a campaign through research and hard data.
AI gives marketers the ability to analyse and predict future objectives behaviour from the audience based on statistical reports and patterns of behaviour.
Most companies who have used and integrated AI strategy into their business have the same objective. They have a specific problem that they need to solve and they are using artificial intelligence to do it.
Let’s look a little bit more carefully at how AI can benefit your business’ marketing.
Benefits of an AI Strategy for Digital Marketing
Creating an AI strategy will benefit your marketing department and increase its efficiency in a multitude of ways.
This includes business strategy. In terms of digital marketing, this particular strategy has the capacity to track down what kind of content that consumers find most interesting and what attracts them.
Digital marketers used to use a variety of tools to find out what might impress the audience; AI strategy aids marketers to create more personalised content that will be distinguishing for every target audience.
This allows the customers the experience they will enjoy and benefit most out of.
Artificial intelligence also offers a more sophisticated digital marketing process. This means that instead of marketers guessing the needs of their audience, it’s possible to predict the audience’s reaction to campaigns based on previous behaviour.
Using an AI strategy for digital marketing does not discard the traditional process. Instead, it makes the process easier and more proficient for the department, the client and the product that is promoted.
AI strategies also allows digital marketers to establish more proficient and personalised marketing campaigns and with better distribution among a specific target audience too. By doing so, marketers can work with a broader view of the campaign.
They won’t waste as much time in collecting data. Simply put, artificial intelligence will collect the data for marketers and allow them to apply it creatively. That is how the digital marketing department in any industry can benefit from artificial intelligence in the workplace.
In terms of digital marketing being incorporated into artificial intelligence, there are four main issues that this business strategy rectifies. This can also be applied into any other industry. These main issues are:
- Minimising errors,
- Minimising faults in performance,
- Increasing productivity in workplace
- Maximising breakthroughs in the company.
This all sounds great. However, in the interest of fairness, it’s also worth looking at the negative side of implementing an AI strategy.
Risks of Using an AI Strategy for Digital Marketing
AI is considered a cutting edge trend, but it still has its disadvantages. The disadvantages of artificial intelligence include ethical concerns, cost, and loss of control over business decisions and implementation.
Ethical concerns are crucial because artificial intelligence tends to invade the privacy of the target audience. It is quite common for companies to use artificial intelligence in an invasive way towards their clients.
This has been a more-than widespread mistake that has led to lawsuits and demolished reputations.
The second concern is cost, because AI strategy can be an expensive investment. The cost of incorporating artificial intelligence into a business is a risky endeavour. It needs a calculated approach.
Even after you implement an AI strategy, there is still plenty of room for mistakes. If the strategy malfunctions, it costs almost double the amount of money to fix it. The third concern is the implementation of AI strategy, which is a lengthy process when you don’t use an off-the-shelf solution.
The final concern is the loss of control over business decisions. AI strategy tends to give up the human aspect of decision-making. AI strategy is very technical and doesn’t allow much human instinct to come to play.
This can cause a lot of controversy in a company. This is because artificial intelligence could be implemented and eliminates the human aspect of a firm. This is especially true when AI has the potential to lead to job losses through redundancy.
How to Create a Successful AI Strategy
In order to create a successful AI strategy, you need to define the problem that you’re facing. Whether it is business strategy, information development, or customer service, artificial intelligence can solve a range of issues.
Even after you implement an AI strategy, you’ll then have to measure its success.
The first step is figuring out how AI can help ease this problem. Artificial intelligence will help fix a problem and incorporate technological progress, but the company has to define the problem’s extent.
The upper management is responsible to fully understand if AI strategy is the best implementation of problem-solving in their business.
You should decide whether or not AI strategy is the best choice for your business. After that, the next step is hiring the right people, or finding the right off-the-shelf tools.
It is crucial to find the right people to integrate AI strategy. This includes data scientists, researchers and software engineers, as well as non-tech professionals who have experience with various AI tools.
The final step is to ensure your staff understand your AI strategy and how it impacts them.
For example, the customer service department will have to learn how to use automated chat-bots as a means of interaction. They’ll also need to have a strategy for offering joined up service, including chat-bots.
Once these steps were implemented and monitored, then the integrated artificial intelligence in a company should be a success.
AI Strategy in the Business World: How is it Approached?
One of the most common uses of AI strategy in the business world is project management and maintenance. Another common use of artificial intelligence strategy is data collection and statistical analysis.
Incorporating artificial intelligence strategy into a company turns an organisation from a functional to a learning organisation.
There are four dimensions to implementing an AI strategy:
- Plan for action,
- Authority,
- Infrastructure,
- Creativity.
Each one of these aspects is a cornerstone of AI strategy and helps explain the intricacies of AI strategy. Your plans for action should be intertwined with the organisation’s business strategy and its overall objective in its industry.
Authority in AI strategy refers to the organisational structure of the company while adding the AI to the upgraded model. This means that there should be an “AI model” that will optimise the structure of your business.
Artificial intelligence needs equipment and data architecture in order to function properly. In the business world, infrastructure for AI revolves around the relevant tools that are required for it to work.
The fourth and final aspect is creativity and this consists of human labour. AI strategy requires an “all hands on deck” approach from every part of the company; this stems from the CEO all the way down.
In any company that incorporates AI strategy, leadership is necessary for the process to run smoothly and surely.
AI Strategy and its Impact
There is one area that AI strategy has made a remarkable contribution, and that is data. It has the ability to process any form of information or data and create the insights the companies need.
There are many different structures of data and AI can process all of them.
AI also helps in the decision-making process, cuts time and offers better insights. It can also give the company a considerable advantage in the marketplace, because of the information it offers.
It provides companies with relevant information about any topic they require and gives real-time insight.
Real-time insight is information being applied to the real-world. Artificial intelligence is applied to offer real-life insight in strategic plans. It is processed both within the company and with external parties.
Finally, AI strategy has been known to avoid and maintain risk that could occur in a company. Artificial intelligence also gives the organisation a considerable advantage because it can tell the company what their competitors are doing.
This gives the organisation an edge and keeps them one step ahead, due to the information that AI strategy processes.
Examples of AI Strategy Use in Companies
AI strategy has boomed in the business world for the past two years. The positive results and expansion of AI has led to many companies integrating artificial intelligence into business applications.
The most famous example is Walmart and the artificial intelligence, HANA. Walmart is one of the most successful retail corporations in the world.
HANA is an AI strategy that is specifically created for the Walmart chain, where they use it for machine learning.
HANA stores information on RAM because it allows the corporation to access more accurate data with real-time.
HANA has been used in analytics for product promotion and machine learning; machine-learning is information-driven decisions that keep the organisation better informed. This is the current alternative to informed assumptions of the future.
Other companies have used HANA as an AI strategy and they claim that their revenue has been skyrocketed. Businesses use artificial intelligence because it helps them prevent any conflict before it arises.
If there is a problem with the supplier of the company, then the AI strategy will let them know; it will even offer solutions to the problem that harmonises with their budget.
HANA and Walmart is just one of the many examples of artificial intelligence being integrated in a company.
It is also one of many instances where the organisation doesn’t regret artificial intelligence and mentioned high praises about it. HANA concentrates on the machinery, so it gives seasonal alerts on whether a piece of equipment should be fixed or upgraded.
How to Create an AI Strategy: Takeaways
AI strategy brings many benefits, from saving time to improving decision making through the use of data.
However, almost every expert and data analyst in AI has suggested that before integrating this business strategy into a company, there are measures to be taken. Companies need to take a calculated approach to the integration, rather than jumping head-first.
One of the easiest ways to minimise risks while utilising AI is to use an off-the-shelf tool, which is made for a specific purpose. Examples include AIs for email marketing, social media, chat-bots and even content marketing.
AI strategy is rapidly dominating the business world, what time is the right time for your business to get ahead of this trend?
