Three ways AI can help your business

Why use AI in your business?

Until recently Artificial Intelligence was decidedly unimpressive. It was less “Oh no AI is taking over” and more “...oops, AI has fallen over again”.

But recently AI tech has massively improved. Self-driving cars, real-time voice-stress analysis and high profile services like Amazon’s Alex and Google Home. Lots of new services and start-ups are based on AI.

Firms like Microsoft with Cortana, Apple with Siri, IBM with Watson, Google with Deepmind, Amazon with Alexa, Samsung with Bixby and many others are all happy to rent out their AI services to anyone with a web connection and lots of data to feed the AI.

There are several different types of AI technology and things are moving pretty fast so it is not very clear how firms might take advantage. So here are a few tips to help you upgrade your business to an AI-powered business.

1. Adding new capabilities to firms

AI gives firms new automation capabilities. Capabilities like AI vision, language recognition, and recommendation systems used to be really expensive. They had to be done by expensive humans.

Now even small firms can rent them from the Cloud. Just like they use any other Cloud software.

These automated capabilities let humans do something else – they “lighten the load”. So expensive assets can be used elsewhere.

For example, AI vision systems can identify potential cancer cells which frees radiologists to focus on truly critical cases

So think of AI as a new member of the team which is good at really specific jobs. It doesn’t replace the team. It just frees people up to focus on what they do best.

2. Radically changing business processes

Things that used to be so slow to do that they were annual can now be in real-time. Like constantly checking stock levels and optimising the workflows of distribution centres.

Things that were checked only when needed can now be done on an ongoing basis, just to see if something needs doing. Like when cars check their safety sensors many times per second.

By adding AI capabilities to your firm you don’t just free up your skilled staff. You can also revolutionise how everything gets done.

AI does things very fast. It can integrate many ‘experiments’ at once and then pick the winners. It can make “special” or premium services into “standard”. Even business process reengineering can be more granular or it can be done “on the fly”.

So think how you might want to keep optimising multiple dependencies like business processes and customer journey options – not just discrete events and snapshots.

This includes complex business decisions and actions which need consideration on multiple levels.

3. Transforming business models and radically innovating services

AI gives you new capabilities and you can bundle these together like Lego blocks. Then new configurations of capabilities create will value in new ways.

For example, the music I love used to be based on what I’d heard and what friends suggested. But Spotify analyses what millions of people listen to. So now I don’t even need to know it exists to get it on my playlist.

AI is giving us totally new things of value not just new ways to produce what we’ve valued before.

How can your firm keep up with the competition?

We run summer projects where our MBA students help firms to think through the most pressing of business issues – not just AI, anything which matters to your firm.

Projects focus on any business issue which is important to the firm, e.g. marketing, HR, financial, regulation, economics, strategy or new technological changes. It depends on which projects would help specific you.

If you want to talk about an MBA project this summer please e-mail Dr Duncan Shaw, MBA Management/Company Based Projects Co-ordinator at duncan.shaw@nottingham.ac.uk

About Duncan Shaw

After working in engineering and logistics Duncan did an MBA at Manchester Business School and went into management consultancy, where he worked for clients including Xerox, Coca-Cola, Danone and Shell. Duncan joined Motorola and was made Customer Satisfaction Manager for the EMEA region where he led a team that profoundly increased Customer Satisfaction for Motorola's handset division in Europe.

Duncan is a Lecturer in Information Systems at Nottingham University Business School and his research uses ideas from theories of complex systems to help managers deal with the problems that are produced when networks of people and organisations are used to create value. He is an expert in Big Data analytics; customer journeys; customer loyalty; Strategic inter-organisational networks; B2B network orchestration; value creation networks, coordination theory; complexity and systems theories; B2B strategy and B2B customer relationship management (CRM); outsourcing and partnering. Duncan consults to private companies and public sector organisations and publishes in academic journals and books. Duncan has a PhD in modelling Network Orchestration from Manchester Business School.

For more ways to help your business using AI, Internet of Things and Big Data analytics follow Duncan's blog