3 Sectors That Benefited Most from Artificial Intelligence Software
Artificial intelligence is everywhere. The technology, which traces its origin back in 1956, is now present in almost every business sector. What was once a luxury reserved for corporations with deep pockets, AI has now become a requirement for businesses to grow and compete on a global scale.
How artificial intelligence helps businesses is quite evident across multiple sectors. With AI, business processes are not only streamlined; they become more precise as well. AI can capture tons of data and analyze it to produce more actionable insights that expert data scientists would have missed. Smart AI-powered applications can converse with customers and website visitors in a humanlike tone. Devices with AI capabilities can transform any workplace into a safer environment. These are just a few benefits of artificial intelligence.
Making businesses more efficient, competitive, and profitable is how AI is changing many industries. It brings so much disruption and shifts business dynamics in significant ways that it’s not surprising AI software adoption and implementation across multiple industries are steadily increasing. The sectors below are the ones leading the charge.
1. Retail/ e-Commerce
Among the most impacted business sectors as far as AI is concerned are retail and e-Commerce. There are so many areas where artificial intelligence can be leveraged to help retailers and e-Commerce operators to increase the efficiencies of their internal business processes, attract and grow their customer base, and ultimately generate more revenue.
Speaking of revenue, the use of AI for customer behaviour prediction and communications, has led to impressive results for many players in the retail and e-Commerce industries. According to Intercom, chatbots helped increase sales by 67% while 26% of all sales began with a chatbot interaction.
AI-powered chatbots provide smart and responsive assistance to visitors and shoppers. Machine learning and natural language processing enable chatbots to learn meaning and context. This allows chatbots to engage people in humanlike conversations, thus increasing customer engagement and empowering customers to make purchase decisions. Chatbots automatically go deep into a customer’s history and analyze all information to make product recommendations, offer relevant promos, or upsell and cross-sell products that customers can relate to.
2. Logistics
Logistics is one massive industry comprising complex sub-sectors that run on chains of businesses and processes. It includes inbound and outbound transportation management, warehouse management, fleet management, order fulfillment, supply chain management, demand analysis, support services, and more.
With so many components and cogs involved in its operations, it’s no wonder logistics companies invest heavily in AI to streamline their processes, automate arduous and repetitive tasks, and keep their warehouses, fleets, supplies, and other assets fully functional.
According to the Economist, businesses in the logistics market experienced massive gains after integrating artificial intelligence into their core strategies. Profits made range from $1.3 to $2.3 trillion per year.
The definite advantages AI brings to the logistics industry also reveal many potential applications in other business areas. The following are just some of the implementations that experts expect in artificial intelligence future scenarios:
- Manufacturers and distributors are looking to fully automate warehouse operations with AI;
- Smart fleet monitoring tools onboard trucks, heavy equipment, and other fleet assets help improve performance, efficiency, and safety;
- Smart roads installed with beacons, sensors, and solar panels to further improve fleet performance and accelerate movement up the supply chain.
3. Banks and Financial Services
As online shopping became the new norm and mobile phones evolved into more than just a communication device, people expect banks and other financial services providers to level up as well. Consumers now want smarter, safer, and more convenient ways to perform banking transactions, whether it’s depositing money into their accounts or investing it in the hottest stocks.
Artificial intelligence has provided the operators in the financial industry an enabling technology to meet customers’ changing demands and expectations. AI technology further fortified many security protocols used by banks and other financial institutions, protecting consumers and banks from fraudulent transactions and identity theft.
But the benefits for banks don’t stop there. AI helps banks make better underwriting decisions, predict more accurate forecasts, adopt more rewarding portfolios, and focus efforts on avenues where customer engagement is the highest and revenues are the biggest. From a security perspective, AI provides banks with the technology to identify and grade risky clients, receive real-time alerts to suspicious transactions through behavior and risk analysis, and even discover insider threats within the organization.
AI Should Be a Priority
Most AI adoptions are happening in large industries in need of massive automation, enhanced security, and efficient management of multiple, complicated networks of systems, devices, and assets. But experts concur that AI will soon become a necessity even for small businesses and medium enterprises.
From $10.1 billion in 2018, the global AI software market is set to grow by as much as $126 billion by 2025, according to the 2019 Artificial Intelligence Market Forecasts. That’s how essential AI will become in the near future.
It’s not a matter of what industries AI will disrupt next. It is a question of when. Based on the most recent artificial intelligence statistics, AI, at least for now, should be a priority.