How AI Can Help the Burgeoning Small Businesses

The small business owner is always looking for a way to either cut costs or to get more value out of their technology. Today, many businesses are looking to automated tools fueled by AI to do just that. Today, we thought we would talk a little bit about AI for small business and how it works to help increase business productivity.

AI for Money Management

One of the most crucial parts of a successful business is managing money. If a business routinely has cash flow problems, it puts a big strain on their ability to face new challenges. It isn’t exactly a rarity either. In fact, according to one study over 60 percent of small business owners have stressed about cash flow in the past 18 months. With all that is going on in the world, that isn’t overly surprising, but if cash flow problems sustain for an organization, it is one of the telltale signs that the business is fledgling. 

Today, there are solutions out there that look at a company’s cash flow position and use AI to predict the cash flow 90 days into the future. With AI-driven tools, a small business owner can get ahead of the challenges they may have in that time before it negatively affects the business. These tools can be used to mitigate problems before they happen and even help decide if and when it is time to start adding new talent to your team. 

AI for Customer Service

Artificial intelligence is seeing a lot of growth in customer-facing situations. Not only can it help immensely in the marketing aspect of the business, it can be a big benefit in customer support, as well. In this way, AI is becoming one of the most utilized tools on each end of the sales process. 

In marketing, it can be used to personalize the marketing for people. It is proven that more people are engaged by marketing that has a personal touch. 96 percent of marketers agree that any effort taken to personalize the customer experience will increase the overall trust inherent in a customer relationship. Without some form of automation this process would cost far too much to be viable, but with the use of AI, you can have a profile of all existing customers and when a product or service that a customer or lead has shown interest in is being prioritized by the business, it can work to push notifications and marketing materials to those would-be customers. 

In customer support, AI might be the most useful. Since customer service is an important part of every business, but it doesn’t really bring in any revenue, solutions that will allow a business to reduce their costs on the support are very useful. AI does this by removing the need for customer service agents online, the major interface of support nowadays. Chatbot technology using AI will give enough guidance to solve most customer problems, while directing them to more personal support options if need be. 

AI for Cybersecurity

One of the most important parts of the modern business has to be how they tackle cybersecurity. Businesses are operating digitally at a much higher rate than ever before and, as a result, they are under more pressure to keep scammers and hackers from gaining access to their digital assets. While reports from cybersecurity experts like Norton put the average data breach in millions of dollars, most small businesses don’t have that much money tied up in productivity and liquid assets. 

That doesn’t add up to a good situation. 

AI is being used in several cybersecurity systems including endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and more. The idea is that if an AI can find and recognize patterns in data to effectively teach security systems to avoid certain experiences, it will cut down on cybercrime. Today, in attempts to mitigate risk and do it in a cost effective manner, more small businesses than ever are investing in AI.

How can your business use AI? Do you need a full rundown of how it can help your business be more secure and effective? If so, call the IT experts at Directive today at 607.433.2200.