How To Get Started Implementing AI In Your Business

There’s no denying that artificial intelligence (AI) adoption has grown exponentially. AI is no longer just the disruptor it was when it was first introduced — it has transformed into something that businesses have recognised as an important cog in daily operations. 

Today, the availability and use of AI solutions are no longer limited to tech giants; they have become accessible to small and medium-sized businesses as well. In fact, the everyday employee is familiar with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and is able to use them with ease. Chatbots also enhance customer experiences by providing quick feedback and responses around the clock to common questions. 

In this article, we will take a deep dive into the growing significance of AI in business and explore how you can implement it in your business. With the help of the right AI development services, you can leverage the available technologies to exceed your business goals.

Benefits of Implementing AI

There are several benefits to implementing AI in your business, regardless of niche or industry. The most critical ones include:

Improved Efficiency

This is one of the top reasons why many organisations choose to leverage AI. Through AI integration into existing workflows and systems, employees can delegate tedious, repetitive tasks to AI. Thanks to AI, time-consuming work like data entry, invoicing, encoding, and transcription can now be automated, allowing teams to streamline operations and focus on other business-critical tasks.

Improved Decision-Making

Artificial intelligence software can help teams leverage data and analytics and use these insights to make better strategic choices. From finance to marketing, AI can process large volumes of data and return clean, pre-processed insights that teams can use to make crucial decisions. 

Enhanced Customer Experience

Businesses can pre-program AI chatbots to quickly respond to customers with helpful information, or use AI to provide customers with personalised recommendations when shopping online. Both can serve to not only increase customer satisfaction and loyalty but also significantly improve the customer experience overall. 

Cost Reduction

A global survey on cost reduction from AI adoption shows that organisations can reduce costs by 31% to 55% by implementing AI into their operations. The manufacturing and service operations industries benefit the most, according to Statista, hitting cost savings of 55% and 54%, respectively. Let’s take a look at other industries as well:

• Human resources: 40%
• Marketing and sales: 41%
• Research and development/Product and service development: 31%
• Risk: 44%
• Service operations: 54%
• Strategy and corporate finance: 31%
• Supply chain management: 33%

Steps to Implement AI in Your Business

So now, the question is, how do you get started implementing AI into your current operations? 

Here’s a strategic guide:

Step 1: Identify a Business Problem

Create an outline of pain points that you feel can be solved by automation. 

Could you be dealing with bottlenecks in certain areas of manufacturing? Or do you find invoicing to be a time-consuming and error-prone aspect of your current operations? 

You know your business best, so it won’t be a problem to identify areas for improvement where you could use some help from AI. Focus on pain points where AI can deliver measurable value, such as customer service or sales forecasting, so you can see how much of an improvement you’re experiencing.

Step 2: Assess Your Data Readiness

Many businesses have unstructured data that may be difficult to process, even with some AI development. AI-ready data is ideally not siloed, accessible, and living in a unified platform. You can ensure you have sufficient, clean, and relevant data by starting with existing data sources such as CRM systems, ERP, Data Lake, or your sales data to ensure that your AI systems can deliver maximum value to your business. 

Step 3: Choose the Right AI Solution

This step involves understanding the limitations and capabilities of different AI models and selecting the best solution for your needs. Make sure you have a robust test before committing to an AI solution, or enlist the services of an AI strategy consultant. AI consultants will help you with important details pertaining to your specific business, such as understanding compliance laws, like new EU legislation, if they’re relevant to your field. 

Step 4: Build a Cross-Functional Team

Ensure you involve key stakeholders within your business, as well as some end users, data analysts, IT, and department heads to build a cross-functional team. This way, you cover all your bases in terms of what each stakeholder needs. 

It may also be helpful to collaborate with external experts or AI consultants, like The Virtual Forge, to ensure that your business is properly assessed and your needs are met. The Virtual Forge provides AI consulting, AI development, AI governance, and AI integration services to help you find the right AI infrastructure for your business:

• AI analysis: Comprehensive workshops, training sessions, and analysis to ensure that you are up to date on the latest AI solutions available to you
• AI security: Comprehensive auditing, training, and expert advice to ensure the security and compliance of your data while maintaining seamless integration with current tools
• Model building: Training AI with data by providing guidance and oversight so you can keep reaping the benefits of your AI infrastructure
• Artificial intelligence/Machine learning infrastructure management: The Virtual Forge can help teams run self-hosted models on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and other cloud services.

Step 5: Monitor and Measure Outcome

As with any new strategy, it’s always best to monitor and measure the performance of your new AI setup. Set KPIs to evaluate success and determine whether the problems you identified in Step 1 have been addressed. 

Of course, cost reduction is an excellent indicator of success, but so are intangibles like improved efficiency, streamlined workflows, and the like. Lastly, make sure to continuously gather feedback and adjust the AI system based on performance. This means doing regular check-ins with stakeholders or taking note of any queries or complaints end users have over the course of time.

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Challenges to Expect

As with the adoption of any new technology, there are certain difficulties you may encounter when it comes to AI. Among these are:

• Data quality issues: Incomplete or inaccurate data can hinder AI performance, so ensure you have AI-ready data that is clean, accessible, and not siloed (as mentioned in Step 2)
• Integration with existing systems: Seamless integration with current business workflows isn’t always a given, which is why it’s important to enlist the help of an AI developer
• Change management: Employees may need to adapt to new AI-driven processes, which may trigger some issues during the transition. AI consulting services can be your best bet in ensuring that everything goes over smoothly. 

Best Practices for Success

When it comes to AI adoption, it’s always a good move to start small and scale fast. Begin with manageable AI use cases, and see how they help your team. From here, you can edit your processes, change up your solutions as you deem fit, and scale as needed. 

Next, it’s very important to focus on ROI. Prioritise projects that demonstrate a clear ROI from AI, and veer away from solutions that come with bells and whistles and hefty price tags — you may not need all of them, plus you’ll be spending a lot upfront. Focus on AI initiatives that cut costs and improve efficiency.

To make sure your AI infrastructure is maximised, invest in training. Ensure that your teams understand how to leverage AI effectively by checking for clean data and learning how to use the tools and insights to their maximum potential. If needed, you can enlist the help of AI consultants to help with change management.

Another best practice is to stay compliant, especially with regard to data privacy regulations like the GDPR and CCPA. AI ethics can be tricky, so it’s best to err on the side of caution, especially if you’re in an industry that handles people’s personally identifiable information, like health or finance. 

Lastly, work with AI experts to ensure all your bases are covered. Whether you’re only in need of consulting to help your team transition or need the help of an AI developer to customise AI solutions that will fit your infrastructure — consulting with experts is always the best way to ensure the right fit when it comes to AI implementation. 

Conclusion

When it comes to AI adoption in business, it’s always prudent to start with a clear problem and measurable goals. This way, you can gauge which methods and solutions work for you and which ones don’t. Remember to leverage AI as a tool for continuous improvement and not just a one-time solution. 

This means you’ll continually need to monitor whether you’re still hitting your goals and whether the solution still works for you. Technology and business are both rapidly changing landscapes, so there’s rarely a one-time, big-time solution for any one business problem. 

The good news is that now, more than ever, it’s a great time to embrace AI to stay competitive in the evolving business landscape. Regardless of your niche or industry, there’s likely an AI solution that can help you reach your business goals faster. 

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How Can We Help?

At Virtual Forge, we've helped some of the world's leading brands do exactly that by providing end-to-end AI services, from data and strategy to model development, deployment, and scale. Our AI services help our clients make sense of where, when, and how to use the range of new agents and services that are everywhere.

By focusing on 3 Pillars of AI — AI Integration and Enablement, AI Data Preparation, and AI Governance, we aim to help our clients make reasoned, informed, secure, and cost-effective decisions about tools and opportunities that will bring efficiencies and business process improvements.

Using AI, whether at scale or in a small proof of concept, is a process involving understanding what you want to achieve, measuring what success looks like, making sure data is in a state to be reliably used, and then governing the results and usage.

To learn more about how we can help you accelerate your AI journey, visit our AI Services Page or reach out at connect@thevirtualforge.com. We'd love to learn about your business challenges and discuss how AI can help.

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