This year there is no excuse not to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into your business. AI technology has changed how all businesses work and has contributed to many cost-effective strategies and the scaling of small businesses. South African small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to have AI automation that makes life easier.

AI automation uses AI techniques such as Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision to process and learn from large amounts of data.

Once an AI application processes the data and builds an AI model, it can direct intelligent decision-making based on what it learned from the data.
In this article, we discuss the benefits of having artificial intelligence automation for SMEs and which ones you should consider.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence Automation for SMEs

The benefits of AI have been written about endlessly; however, AI automation has its own benefits. Some of the benefits of AI automation include:

Cost Saving

Businesses are always looking for ways to save money and AI can help with that. Because AI automates repetitive human tasks, it can help reduce some labour costs. However, reducing labour costs does not mean terminating employees, it just means saving money on hiring various specialists who need high salaries.

If you have a product and customers call with questions, AI can send them information on how to use the product or solve any issues they have.

Scaling

Using automated AI solutions can help your business to be able to handle growing volumes and decreasing values without any significant changes in your costs or resources. If your business is rapidly growing, having AI will help you scale effectively without any significant costs.

Customer Service

AI applications like chatbots can significantly increase the relationship between you and your customers. Using AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) platforms can better relationships with customers, develop custom email campaigns and gain insights into your customers’ buying behaviour.

Better Efficiency

AI-powered solutions can automate your repetitive tasks and ultimately streamline your processes. AI increases your efficiency and allows you to provide faster turnaround times for your customers, as well as improved productivity and cost savings.

Innovation

AI automation means that your routine tasks are taken care of, leaving free time for you and your employees to focus on being more creative and developing strategic initiatives.

Analysis

AI models are designed to analyse large datasets and provide valuable insights. Using these insights you can make better decisions for your business. Taking it further, you can use the collected data, analyse it and make predictions about your business. These predictions are based on patterns or trends and can enhance decision-making.

These are just a few of the benefits of using AI automation in your business. Now that you know the benefits of the technology, it’s time to find some AI automation for your business.

AI Automation Solutions for SMEs

Here are some examples of artificial intelligence automation you can look into.

AI Automation for Offer Development Tasks

Whether your business provides a service or product, you need to create offers that match up with your customers and still make enough to cover costs and make a profit. Manually creating offers can be very time-wasting and prone to mistakes.

AI-powered solutions can automate the offer creation part of your business including your pricing strategy. Look into platforms such as Zapier which is a tool that automates your repetitive tasks such as product pricing and offer creation.

AI Automation for Invoicing Tasks

Invoicing is one of those tasks that can take up a lot of time. Using AI you can automate your invoicing, saving you time to focus on more important things and ensuring invoices go out in time.

You can look into platforms such as Sage which uses AI to automate the process of invoicing.

AI Automation for Customer Service Tasks

AI can help you keep up with the demands of your customers. Because AI automation can analyse the data of your customers, it can tell you about their favourite products/services and their buying behaviour, and help you set up personalised marketing efforts tailored to each customer.

Look into platforms such Zoho which has an AI companion called Zia. Zia can fetch the data you need, predict the outcome of sales activities, detect any issues and automate any tasks related to customer services.

AI Automation for Social Media Marketing Tasks

Social media is an amazing way to market your brand and market directly to your customers. Using AI, you can automate content creation, and post-scheduling and also perform activities such as social media listening. Additionally, AI can provide valuable analytics regarding the performance of your social media marketing campaigns.

Platforms such as Buffer can help with tailoring posts for each social media channel. Or look into Flick, a platform which turns content ideas into social media posts.

AI automation for Data entry and Record-keeping Tasks

Data entry and record keeping is one of those things you do but probably don’t really enjoy. With AI automation, you don’t need to do anything. The AI solution will validate and clean your data for you and categorise everything properly.

Explore platforms such as Super.AI which automates business processes and complex documents.

These are just a few examples of AI-automated solutions. There are other solutions for things such as financial management (mosaic.tech) and lead generation (Salesforce). It all depends on what you want automated and from there you can find the right AI solution for your business.

For more information on using AI in your business, read our article on how to use artificial intelligence ethically in business. Remember, to get your tickets for the SME SA Funding Summit on SME Events.