5 AI projects that put your company on the fast track to profits

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm, and forward-thinking companies are some of the earliest adopters of this trend. Although it’s true that most have no clue how to harness the full capabilities of AI, it has not deterred them from experimenting with the potential applications of the technology. No wonder IDC predicts global AI revenues to nearly double to $12.5 billion in 2018, and continue growing until it surpasses the $46 billion mark in 2020. The greater part of that spending will contribute to systems capable of running AI. And, even if you lack the manpower or resources to create technology from scratch, existing services and tools can help you channel the power of artificial intelligence for business growth. Check out five such AI projects that will pay for themselves quickly:

Chatbots

AI projects

Think back on the questions you’re asked most often, and utilize that information to develop a chatbot capable of answering support questions.

It does not necessarily have to be a customer service bot; you might devise a chatbot that responds to questions from new employees regarding HR benefits or details on how to reach the help desk.

Microsoft QnA Maker is a service that works exceedingly well in this regard. Simply input the URL of your FAQ or feed documents and spreadsheets containing the questions and answers.

The service will divide the questions and answers into pairs, which you can review and convert into API. However, if you’re seeking an interface that provides more than text replies, consider the Microsoft Bot Framework. This will allow you to display rich content and media.

Try to create bots that are compatible with social networking websites and evolve over time. So, instead of answering individual inquiries, facilitate a goal-centric conversation that resolves the customer’s issue.

For example, Microsoft recently introduced customer-care features in Dynamics 365, where a virtual agent offers multiple solutions and directs the customer to human support, together with details about the conversations and the recommendations given.

Even if it cannot resolve a problem, it learns how to handle the situation the next time. Some organizations like Microsoft and Macy’s have already set up this service in-house to serve as online support.

Enterprise resource planning inventory management

AI projects

While the concept of supply chain automation is not exactly a novel one, artificial intelligence takes it to the next level and makes the technology more accessible.

Now, rather than just historic sales data, artificial intelligence takes into account the way clients research their shopping options on the Internet, how weather influences shopping behavior, and other external and internal trends. All this culminates in efficient inventory planning via forecasting demand.

Amazon, for example, can estimate just how many shirts of a particular size or color it will sell in a single day. Moreover, AI has been responsible for boosting Target’s revenue by 15 percent to 30 percent.

If that’s not all, Otto, the online German retailer, makes use of AI to predict what will sell within the next month and they are correct 90 percent of the time. This has enabled them to reduce returns by over two million items annually and decrease the surplus stock amount by a fifth.

The AI-powered purchasing system selects the styles and colors that will supposedly sell and places orders of 200,000 products every month from third-party sellers.

Fraud analysis

One of the most effective AI projects you can implement is one that identifies anomalous and fraudulent transactions, especially on a larger scale, that cannot be handled by traditional data analytics.

Artificial intelligence is excellent when it comes to detecting scammers who are paying multiple times within a specified trigger limit, legitimate clients who are being scammed, and newly added merchants displaying unusual actions or behaviors.

Some companies rely on Amazon Machine Learning to train numerous systems how to detect fraudulent actions instead of attempting to create one model capable of scoring fraud of all types. After all, a merchant might be at risk from multiple fraud techniques, each with its own set of variations.

Artificial intelligence also works wonders by preventing bad transactions from going through. The credit division at Ford Motors is using ZestFinance-supported artificial intelligence to estimate the possibilities of certain borrowers paying back a financial loan despite their low credit scores.

So, AI has the power to distinguish between bad risks and reliable customers properly and quickly.

Impact of artificial intelligence on security

The security industry is vast and complex, and artificial intelligence is the solution to only a small part of the problem. However, it is still powerful enough to identify attacks under the cover of all the alerts and logs.

Take, for instance, the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection. Despite its name, it is not an antivirus software; instead, it’s a machine learning system that compares the behavior of your PC to others running Windows 10 Enterprise on your network, notifying you and your security team of malicious attacks, a document exploit, or social engineering.

While you still have to comb through logs to remedy the damage, artificial intelligence security tools allow you to cut through the noise and get to the crux of the matter.

Predictive maintenance for IoT

AI projects

Do you wait until the last moment for your system to break before fixing it? This leads to poor user satisfaction and downtime. Plus, you have to take systems offline more frequently to conduct maintenance which decreases production yields. It is better to be able to predict an issue and correct it before it becomes an issue that impedes progress and/or hurts results.

Utilize the Azure IoT Suite from Microsoft to monitor your equipment remotely, assess the chances of failure, and service equipment before a total breakdown. Not only does it improve the overall customer experience but the total costs go down as well since most product problems now get fixed on the first visit. The number of spare parts in inventory could also be knocked down considerably.

As per the 2016 report on industrial IoT from Accenture, predictive maintenance is capable of minimizing scheduled repairs by 12 percent, reducing maintenance rates by 30 percent, and decreasing breakdowns by a maximum of 70 percent.

Timeframe reduced for ROI results

IT projects are rich and varied, but not all are compatible with AI. The IT projects mentioned above allow you to take full advantage of AI power and raise ROI faster than ever before.

Featured image: Pixabay

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2 thoughts on “5 AI projects that put your company on the fast track to profits”

  1. Sy@TodaysAIcom

    A good read! With the help of AI tools in a company, it could lift burden for the workers and managers since AI would be there to do it. This also means a lot of time and cash will be saved in a company. Chat-bots could be a blessing to the 24/7 customer service a company needs to offer. Adopting with AI as soon as possible is what a company needs now if they are to win this contest. But of course, before implementing it to your company, it needs correct evaluation and planning after all, nothing works out without the correct plan.

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