The continuing development of artificial intelligence is poised to change businesses big and small. As Fahim Moledina, a business consultant says, we’re in the midst of a seismic shift. Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation will allow businesses to offload tedious tasks like payroll management to focus on more important activities, opening the door for greater innovation and efficiency.

Here’s some ways AI will revolutionize business. 

In Marketing

As Thomas H. Davenport, Abhijit Guha, and Dhruv Grewal write in the Harvard Business Review, “Of all a company’s functions, marketing has perhaps the most to gain from artificial intelligence.” AI will allow businesses to better analyze their market and customer behavior data, producing predictive analytics so that executives can anticipate the needs of their clients. 

In theory, this means businesses will be able to proactively respond to the needs of their customers, before their customers even know what they need. This has the potential to dramatically change marketing, shifting it from a more speculative discipline to one grounded firmly in data and analytics. 

Virtual assistance

Another way AI is going to revolutionize business is through the further adoption of virtual assistants to help both employees and customers. “Within an organization, a virtual assistant can improve efficiency and offer support to both employees and customers of the organization,” writes Martijn Kösters, a partner at Deloitte.

Consider the case of airlines. An AI application can be used to answer simple qstions like about the status of flight, alternate flights or scheduling. Offloading this duty to a computer frees up an airline’s customer service reps to help clients with more complicated problems. 

Virtual assistants could also help employees in large organizations access the right internal information. 

Automating tedious processes

This is what Fahim Moledina, is most excited about. He says letting computers handle dull, repetitive tasks like processing payments or checking time cards “creates a huge opportunity for unlocking greater human potential. If these tedious tasks can be carried out by computers, employees can leave lower-paid, unskilled jobs and find their way into higher-paying, more filling roles. It’s a win-win for everyone: the employees, whose lives are improved, and the employer, who gets better work done.”

Moledina expects smart algorithms will continue to automate routine cognitive processes in a wide array of industries, from retail to hospitality to financial firms. The beauty of this development is that these processes can run 24-hours a day, meaning work can get done, even while your employees sleep. 

Personalize the customer experience

Businesses know the best way to attract and keep customers is to make them feel special. Developments in AI make this much easier for businesses big and small. 

AI can analyze a customer’s past buying history, credit scores and other common threads to product actional sales intelligence that businesses can use to personalize their interactions with customers, either automatically, through the use of virtual assistants, or by providing information directly to live sales people. 

Either way, this allows companies to engage customers in a more impactful way, which is essential as the marketplace grows more competitive. 

Tom Gardner