Leading MTSP Shares How Businesses Can Gain a Competitive Advantage with AI

BlackCSI Prepares Customers to Leverage AI to Reshape Their Businesses

“We’re seeing an explosion in AI,” stated Ruthann Black, President of BlackCSI. “AI is becoming ubiquitous and while many of its applications are behind the scenes, AI is now a fundamental aspect of all infrastructure. Whether companies realize it or not, their core technology will be running on AI very soon, which ultimately means that their businesses will be powered by AI, too.”

The most obvious reason businesses are exploring AI is because it eliminates the mundane aspects of business, the parts which employees don’t enjoy doing because they don’t require very much creativity. With AI finding ways to eliminate minutia, employees are much more likely to be more creatively engaged with their work, which makes them more fulfilled, motivated and productive. AI is helping to free workers from lower-level tasks which can be automated so they can focus on higher-priority, more strategic objectives that actually contribute more significantly to the organization’s bottom-line.

Another reason that AI is booming is because it gives teams access to better information, which means that staff with AI, can make smarter decisions than staff without AI. One common application is AI’s ability to intelligently collect customer data. Social media platforms are a prime example of this, which explains why data has become one of the most valuable resources in the world. With AI powering data collection, companies can answer the broader question, "What is our customer data telling us about where we need to drive the company in the future?" When SMBs are armed with higher caliber information, it becomes extremely hard for outdated businesses to compete, especially at scale.

Another big application for AI is in marketing. Organizations have already started to incorporate AI into their marketing campaigns because it allows you to hyper-personalize marketing material, down to the specific interests, behaviors, and attitudes of each individual interacting with your business. When sales reps are equipped with such highly individualized information, not only are prospects they speak with more highly qualified from the outset, but the hyper-personalization results in deeper rapport, higher closing rates, faster sales cycles, and accelerated growth. SMBs are turning to AI because they can no longer afford to allow sales reps to waste their time on unqualified prospects, or with those who have a low likelihood of purchasing, when there’s no need to do so.

AI is also streamlining collaboration via data sharing through the cloud. Have you ever noticed how big innovations happen when people from different departments finally start talking to each other? When team members are isolated in separate departments, innovation is constrained simply because ideas cannot be cross-pollinated. AIbased software services, like Microsoft Azure have made cloud insights available across the entire company, so spontaneous innovation happens faster than ever before. When an organization can collaborate more efficiently the speed of innovation increases, which leads to faster deployment of new products and services, which ultimately yields more profits.

Another reason that organizations are turning to AI is because it dramatically reduces the problem of "human error.” With about 75% of cybersecurity breaches being caused by phishing emails that employees accidentally click, AI-powered solutions can pre-filter dangerous emails, messages, and notifications making it impossible for employees to make unnecessary mistakes in the first place. For example, in the case of a suspicious email, sent from an unsecured email address from someone you’ve never interacted with before, it can automatically be marked for deletion before the employee gets a chance to review it. This prevents dangerous messages from ever appearing in your employee’s inbox. This is just one application of "Human Error Elimination". Imagine what human error elimination applications can be developed to create “peace of mind” for business owners in any industry.

“BlackCSI is educating businesses in each one of these AI applications because of the profound scale of impact that it will have on virtually every industry and more importantly, because it is a golden opportunity to secure a huge competitive advantage, especially for the early adopters,” added Ms. Black. “SMBs that embrace AI early-on and learn how to incorporate its power into their organizations quickly, will soon outpace their competitors.”