Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to transform businesses across industries by streamlining operations and increasing efficiency. While large corporations have already jumped on to the AI bandwagon, only 8% of startups and small businesses have adopted AI into their processes. This percentage would be even less if we look at India-based startups alone. This is largely due to the common perception that AI comes with a huge appetite for costs and resources.
However, this isn’t entirely true. Inexpensive AI applications have a lot to offer in terms of creating value for small businesses as well – from highly effective customer service to smart marketing solutions. Moreover, a responsive AI solution can extract crucial market insights that can help you stay ahead of competition.
Read on to find out 4 ways your startup or business can leverage AI to its full potential.
- Start small
Rushing into AI enablement without considering the business-specific areas of application serves no purpose. It’s better to start slow and small, especially for SMEs. Begin by defining clear expectations as to what you’d want AI to do for your business. You need to figure out a specific business need (for example, sentiment analysis) where AI can come in handy. Then, integrate multiple AI apps to aid this requirement and augment your team’s productivity. You can then gradually move on to adopting open source AI platforms, cloud systems, and scalable AI frameworks, based on your business requirements.
- Leverage AI-powered tools
Developing an AI solution from scratch is, of course, complex and resource-intensive. Thankfully, there are several AI-powered tools available in the market that can give you the AI advantage with minimal human interference. Tools like X.ai, Import.io, and Uberflip are some examples of scheduling and marketing tools that can be leveraged across domains, including retail, finance, sales, and strategy.
These tools are easy-to-use, requiring minimal AI expertise at your end, and are also dead cheap with the subscription for X.ai starting at just Rs. 600 per month.
- Implement AI for analysis
If you’re looking for safe ways to implement AI in your business, leveraging it for analytics and recruitment would be the best way to go. Analytics is something that most startups find difficult to do because of lack of resources. Recruitment is another dire challenge, with 74% startups finding it difficult to hire good talent.
Hootsuite Insights and Sendible are some effective AI tools that you can leverage for market and sentiment analytics, while CVViZ and Arya are AI-powered recruitment tools that make candidate screening a breeze. The tools are easy to use and require no AI expertise at your end, and you can avail them for as low as Rs. 750 per month.
- Deploy chatbots
If you’re skeptical about implementing AI in your backend operations, one of the best ways to achieve measurable results from AI would be to implement it with frontend processes like customer service. Chatbots are an affordable means of providing a great customer experience, while also helping generate leads and converting customers.
Developing chatbots is easy and surprisingly cheap. In fact, you can opt for readymade chatbots at a minimal price. All you have to do is visit chatbot marketplaces like Botlist and choose a chatbot closest to your business needs. You barely need a couple of hours to get a readymade chatbot up and running.
Conclusion
AI’s applications in businesses, small or large, cannot be undermined, given the immense benefits it offers in terms of optimizing operations and improving ROIs. It is especially an efficient technology to keep abreast of the ever-evolving market conditions and to stay ahead of competition.
