How You Can Use Artificial Intelligence in Your Business

Artificial intelligence used in business has become common and accessible. It is no longer something available only to those in high tech companies or with inhouse developers.

We see this as a huge growth area in business IT and believe this will be one technology trend that will only continue to grow. 

AI is showing up across almost all industries, with new products popping up all the time. Virtual assistants and chatbots, data analysis and reporting are among the top trending use cases for AI in business at the moment. 

It is a common misconception that AI is a big change, it's inaccessible and is often likened to that of Terminator's Skynet or the lifelike AI robot, Sophia. In reality for businesses today, it is making our existing technology smarter and is unlocking the power of all the data that your business collects. 

How Can you Use AI Today?

Microsoft Power BI

PowerBI is a great place to start, it's a reporting tool whereby you can connect your existing business apps (Microsoft and non Microsoft), allowing you to generate reports using data from different platforms. 

PowerBI has AI built in, you can choose to turn it on and in doing so you will be provided with an array of tools to help you analyse your data.

One of these features is Score Sentiment, this function evaluates text and returns a 'sentiment score' ranging from 0 (negative) to 1 (positive). This can be useful for detecting positive and negative 'sentiment' in social media, customer reviews, and discussion forum and helping you understand how your customers feel about your brand.

Another great feature is Tag Images, when you upload an image, or specify an image URL an algorithm automatically gives you tags based on what is in the image. The AI will tag based on the contents of the entire image as well, not just the main subject. For example, a picture of someone in a park will pick up the person, as well as the park, and that they are outside, and the swing in the background. 

Microsoft Cortana 

Cortana is a feature that is already part of most Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes.

Stay up-to-date With Commitments

In it's most basic form, Cortana will send you a round up of perceived actions from your mailbox. For example, if you sent several emails to your contacts last week requesting information, Cortana will send you a reminder that you may need to follow them up. 

It will look something like this: 

Natural Queries in Excel

As an IT Support company that runs a lot of reports, another feature of Cortana that we are quite excited about is 'natural queries'. Excel now allows you to ask a question of your data, rather than having to write a formula. You do this by going to the 'Analyze Data' button located in the Home tab, type in your questions and see what Excel comes back with. 

There are countless AI products coming into the market today, and most existing business apps are introducing an AI component. Our team across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane can help you get started with AI in your business, get in touch to learn more.