AI implementation is one of the most powerful business process automation strategies that exists today, and will only become more capable as innovation continues. As a result, there is a serious time value of investment in AI, as it makes businesses significantly more cost-efficient and productive. While many businesses focus on understanding the ins and outs of different LLMs, the more important questions are those regarding the use cases that are relevant to their industry.
To help businesses get started, this guide will break down:
- Functions of AI implementation
- Benefits of AI implementation
- How to implement AI in business most effectively
- How to choose an AI implementation partner
Let’s get into the important questions– and their answers– regarding AI implementation strategies.
Functions of AI Implementation
While the theory and programming behind AI is something your chosen developer or software provider should definitely understand, as a business owner, the more pressing issue is how exactly AI can be used to improve your operations. Understanding some examples of AI use cases and functions will help you map its functionality onto your business’s needs.
Common AI Functions for Businesses
| Business Process Automation | AI and machine learning tools can automate vital business processes like data entry, data organization, report generation, security, regulatory compliance, and more. |
| IT Service Management | AI IT platforms can automate operations within your IT department, create helpful support materials, and offer convenient portals for both internal users and customers. |
| Customer Service & Success | Customer service management can also leverage AI functionality to automate key functions. Backend automation tools, client-facing chatbots, and self-service portals also fall into this bucket. |
| Lead Nurturing | AI can be used not only to automatically send emails and create convenient templates, but also to generate short nurturing or abandoned cart emails. |
| Marketing | Marketing teams can leverage generative AI to create copy or shop page descriptions for products and services. |
| Web & App development | AI can assist in adding new features and integrations to apps and websites with its limited ability to write blocks of code and organize data as it passes through an API from one app to another. |
These aren’t even close to all of the functions that AI can perform for your business, or assist your staff in performing. They do, though, give enough of an idea of AI’s capabilities for business leaders to begin strategizing how it can be used within their workflows.
Benefits of AI Implementation
It is also essential to understand the value proposition AI presents to make it clear that implementing it isn’t just modernizing for modernizing’s sake. Businesses experience tangible benefits when they deploy a high-quality AI implementation project, and below are just some of the most common:
| Cost Reduction | By automating and digitizing workloads that would typically require multiple staff members and a lot of paperwork, businesses save on labor and supply costs. |
| Improved Customer Satisfaction | Automated customer support and communication tools like self-service portals provide faster, more informative responses to customer inquiries. This improves customer satisfaction by empowering clients with the information they need. |
| Revenue Acceleration | Common use cases for AI in business development in marketing and sales departments increase both lead flow and conversion rate by improving contact frequency and customer education for your leads. |
| Modernized App and Website Functionality | By using or creating AI-powered apps and websites, businesses can improve the features available to both them and their customers, including cross-application functions that add tremendous value by centralizing vital information and operations internally. |
How to Implement AI in Business Most Effectively
There are a few key steps for business leaders looking to implement AI into their workflows:
- Define your top business goals, KPIs, and strategies: Identify your top strategic priorities and the KPIs you want to improve most. Consider what areas of your business could most benefit from greater scalability, automation, or personalization.
- Review AI prioritization with your internal team: Consult with your team about what an ideal AI implementation would look like to them. How would it improve the business? What type of financial impact could it have? What departments and roles would be most impacted?
- Zero-in on top-priority use cases: Take the answers from steps one and two and map out the target workflows, documenting potential intervention points for AI technology. Create user stories of the new AI workflow, describing exactly how it would change the workday for affected users, and identify the metrics and KPIs you’ll use to determine whether it was successful.
Once these steps have been completed, you will then need to determine who will build your new AI platform.
Seeking Out Professional Developers
As we’ve continued to stress in this guide, business leaders should be focused on the practical applications and benefits of AI– not the ins and outs of adapting it to their business. This is why custom software development companies exist to build out and adapt AI tools to create truly purpose-driven platforms and apps.
Whether you need a comprehensive AI automation platform, a helpful mobile and/or desktop application, or simply need to add functionality to your current software stack, bringing in an expert consultant and developer is necessary to get the most out of this new and complicated technology. Although, truly maximizing value requires finding the right partner for this project.
How to Choose an AI Development Partner
The only way that you can be sure of a developer’s ability to meet your business’s unique needs is to find one that has a proven system for ascertaining what those needs are. While many developers have comprehensive applications, or will even invite clients to some onboarding meetings to hear from you exactly what you need, a truly high-value partner will go the extra mile and deep dive into your workflows themselves.
Business leaders should seek out a partner who will jump into their tech stack and map out their workflows from start to finish, listening to their concerns and finding opportunities for automation that their clients wouldn’t catch themselves.
Implement AI in Your Workflows with 7T
At 7T, we use a problem → solution approach to creating AI solutions for our clients across countless industries. Through our custom-built platforms, machine learning and AI technology can provide significant operational advantages with a robust ROI. Our team will identify your organization’s challenges and pain points, oftentimes even showing up on-location for a time to embed ourselves within your business and understand your needs from a first-person perspective. Then, we’ll architect a value-generating solution to transform your vital business processes and meet your goals.
For those looking for a more standardized process to start their AI journey, consider 7T’s AI Transformation Studio – a comprehensive digital transformation program we designed from the ground up to map out and deploy the best possible AI implementation for our clients. If you just want a quick glimpse of potential use cases before diving into a more holistic project with us, check out our AI genie to get some ideas on paper quickly.
7T is based in Dallas, Houston and Charlotte, NC. But our clientele spans the globe. If you’re ready to learn more about how to implement AI in business, contact 7T today.
