11 March 2024
How AI can drive your Digital Transformation
Around 40% of SMBs who have been using AI for less than six months have experienced quick results, a figure which increases to 57% after one year. From machine learning to predictive analytics, this blog explores how advanced AI technologies can help small to medium-sized businesses achieve a successful and sustainable digital transformation. We’ll also offer some tips on choosing the right solutions to support your business and grow your customer base, now and in the future. Let’s get started.
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Advanced machine learning algorithms
Thanks to our friends at Google, Microsoft and Amazon, advanced machine learning (ML) algorithms and tools are now available to businesses of all shapes and sizes. Solutions such as Google Cloud AutoML (which encompasses Vertex AI), Amazon SageMaker Autopilot and Azure AutoML, alongside open-source Python packages, have democratised the playing field. Now SMBs have access to a wealth of different AI tools and solutions that can enhance their specific business.
If you’re unsure about which tech and tools are right for you, you’re not alone. Check out our guide on how to respond to tech hypes as a company.
Large Language Models (LLM)
LLMs, or Large Language Models, are software systems that mimic human communication across a variety of mediums, including text, voice, images and video. Unlike AI which responds specifically to tasks, LLMs can learn and adapt. This makes it a valuable tool for SMBs who want to streamline and automate tasks without the need for extensive custom software development. Here are a few use cases to consider:
Transforming the customer experience
LLMs, powered by advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms, can greatly enhance the quality of your customer service provision and speed up time-consuming, error-prone processes. Gone are the days of creepy chatbots. Through sophisticated language understanding capabilities, bots and virtual assistants now engage with customers in a natural and conversational way, anticipating their requirements and gauging sentiment in real-time.
Enhancing business operations
SMEs can leverage LLM models to analyse vast amounts of unstructured data, facilitating better decision-making and saving precious time and resources. Common use cases for marketing and sales activities include market research, competitor analysis and sentiment tracking. LLMs can also support wider business processes such as summarising complex documents and extracting key information in seconds, making operations more efficient and agile.
Automating mundane tasks
LLMs are equipped with advanced ML capabilities and can be trained to understand business-specific information and automate routine tasks. So, if you want to remove data entry, report generation, or information retrieval from your team’s to-do list then LLMs are a great bet.
Implementation considerations
As you can see, LLMs offer significant benefits to SMEs. However, it’s important to approach their implementation carefully and align the use of LLMs with specific business objectives. For example, if you’re planning to integrate chatbots powered by LLM into customer support channels you need to consider the specific needs of your customers and their preferences and adapt your strategy accordingly. Make sure you monitor your engagement analytics and customer feedback to ensure you stay on the right track.
Predictive analytics for business intelligence
Continuing on the insights theme, predictive analytics is another area of AI that should be central to every lean digital transformation strategy. Especially when your goals include saving time, driving down costs and achieving sustainable growth.
Businesses can now leverage powerful predictive analytics for a variety of marketing-related needs such as lead scoring, improving engagement and click-through rates as well as other business use cases such as forecasting market trends, mitigating risk and managing supply chain.
The rise of low-code/no-code cloud automation makes this technology even more accessible so smaller businesses with limited resources can integrate predictive analytics directly into workflows. You can also buy prebuilt models and toolkits tailored to solve specific industry problems straight out of the box.
Choosing the right AI approach for lean digital transformation
With such an enticing range of AI tools at your disposal and so many business objectives to achieve, it’s a common mistake to get carried away and adopt everything you can, as soon as you can. A far better approach, for your long-term success, is to look at your business from a strategic point of view and identify the areas where AI can yield maximum benefits and help your business to grow and thrive in the long-term.
In addition to the use case mentioned above, SMBs can use AI, ML and LLM technologies to create hyper-personalised marketing campaigns, making sure their message hits the right notes, with the right people at just the right time. AI-powered predictive analytics can also be used by marketers to anticipate customer behaviour, inform campaign strategies and get a deeper understanding of the customer. And, of course, generative AI, in the form of tools like Chat GPT, can create content (albeit of a rather wooden nature) in seconds.
We mentioned earlier about the importance of integrating these powerful tools strategically. The right digital product partner can guide you through the entire process, steering you away from common pitfalls and making sure the AI tech and tools you use are applied strategically and are configured and customised so they seamlessly integrate into your existing operations.
A recent survey revealed that 44% of small business owners say data security is their top hesitation for using AI. A reliable digital product partner helps mitigate these risks by providing insights into potential challenges and developing strategies to overcome them.
Contact us today to find out how the team at Miyagami can help you deploy the right AI for your digital transformation today.