FIR 87: Using Artificial Intelligence in MY Business...HOW??

Financial Investing Radio

How do I go about using Artificial Intelligence in MY BUSINESS?? How many steps does it take to use AI?

Okay, welcome everybody. My name is Grant thanks for joining another episode of click AI radio. All right, so on topic today, I wanted to spend some time discussing What are the things that we do as a small to medium business owner? To prepare our businesses for AI? What are the steps that we go through in order to accomplish that? I remember one of the very first startup company companies as involved with out of college, we had zero control over our data there is we in fact, we didn't even know what data we had. And that was really, really the biggest problem, right? We didn't know what information was available to us, let alone Even if we knew what the information or the data that we did have, we would know how to have extracted any value out of that. So the fact of the matter is, you know, this, I know this is a business owner. Over time we we collect a lot of data from our businesses, right. In fact, over time, it actually starts to look a bit like a mountain, right? So you get this mountain. There you go. That's quite the mountain, right? You get this mountain of data that's collected over time.

And some of that information represents or describes the money that we're receiving some describes money that we're spending, the money's coming in, it's going out. Lots of times, we don't really break that down, especially as a small medium business owner, that's we're so busy just turning the crank, we don't really understand what might all be inside there. Now, the thing that's important to note is that when we have that data, there's actually a lot of secrets and insights that are in the data, right and so deep inside of all of this information that's down here that we've been collecting down inside of there is is some insights that are just looking to be harvested, right, just looking to be pulled out. Now with the things that are going on with COVID and the challenges that are happening to our small to medium businesses throughout the country. It becomes even more incumbent or necessary for us to be Why's with the use of what resources we already have available to us. So this isn't even about going off and finding someone else's stuff. This is looking at what we already have what's available to us that we have rights to it. And then using that to extract some analytics, some insights and predictions even, and some next steps. And that's an important piece that there's those insights tend to be broken into a couple categories. There's one categories that right here on my whiteboard, that's called patterns, right? And that's a very analytics sort of view. It's where the artificial intelligence looks at the data, this mountain of data that you have, and it says, oh, here's some patterns that you may not have been able to see before. And that that becomes important, right that we can't always see it as a human. And so the AI helps us to discover those things. That's the first part. The second part of the mountain over here is what we would call predictions. Okay.

And so with the predictions, it looks at the patterns and it says, what are the what are the probabilities based on different mathematical and other models, that, that something could happen in the future? And so we'd want to be able to understand that view as well. So help us discover looking backwards. What are patterns are, some of them are empirical, and us as humans, we can already we already know what they are. In fact, sometimes when you hit when you look at what the AI produces, you go Yeah, I already knew that. In other times you look at ego. Oh, you're kidding. I didn't didn't realize that there is that connection or correlation that was established over time. And so, so the patterns are critical, because that helps us to even understand how we can adjust our behavior moving forward. But so are the predictions, right? And the predictions come with some level of probability, right, which is While the accuracy level or the probability level of this is 80%, right, or whatever it might be. And so the key is, is to be able to look at both of those, and then ask yourself, therefore hot, right? What am I going to do differently as a business owner with this? Now, we find that the companies that of course, practice this that that are in the habit of leveraging the information, the insights, the patterns and predictions out of their data, they tend to use their resources more effectively.

And especially today, where again, as Ed mentioned, things are even tighter, it's harder to course get access to everything that we need. But it becomes very beneficial for us as an organization to use our resources more efficiently and effectively. And so AI helps us to do that. That's one of the other benefits is it helps us to grow the business And to know, oh, moving forward, let me put more emphasis in this area and less emphasis in another area. And so gives us the opportunity to course grow. Now, sometimes these data insights that comes from AI May we might refer to those as oil. I know you've probably heard the phrase data is the new oil. Where that data comes from. Sometimes it comes from human behavior. Sometimes it comes from systems behaviors. Sometimes it comes from something in the environment outside of our control, wherever it comes from, whatever the source of that is, it translates into some form of information or data on our computers. And therein lies the opportunity to harvest this oil. This oil again, is is a set of these insights, you know, these predictions and these patterns that are available to us. Now when we're thinking about how to I get started with this. What there's one thing when you think about AI, it's looking at it from the perspective of Well, I'm just going to go in and open minded. And that's certainly fine. Because sometimes we don't really know what question to ask. It's also helpful, though, to think about specific questions, because whether it's you that's doing the artificial intelligence preparation, or it's someone else, having an idea of what the kind of questions are that you're looking for that guide some of the predictive direction and behavior, right. In other words, you end up focusing in certain areas saying, Well, if I was trying to predict how many refunds that I might get based on the patterns from the past, right, what does that look like? Obviously, you do some things in the artificial intelligence work to make that happen.

So there's a couple of things on this. You know, there's old business owners and entrepreneurs and more gutters and so forth, right? They do this kind of work. In fact, I've been working with, you know, multiple companies over the not multiple, many companies, multiple doesn't sound as much with many companies over the years that are preparing their data and themselves to take advantage of artificial intelligence. But there's a couple things that I found on this, see if you're going to go do this yourself, right? If you're going to get yourself organized, unique course prepare those business questions like I talked about, that's number one. Number two, gotta get control that data and lots of times organizations will hire artificial intelligence teams, right? The development team, right, that focuses on artificial intelligence, and that's pretty pricey when it comes down to it. And then number three, then you implement that artificial intelligence solution to find your oil, right? What's the oil and then you look at, you know, what came out of it. What does that oil tell you? One of your patterns and predictions and then you look at making adjustments to your business right now. What are the steps to do that? So let's say you're going to go hire your own team that can be really pricey right? It's it can be painful and slow you need data engineers you need a data scientists you need a business analysts generally tell tie it into the business without connecting it to the business. This is all an academic data analysts, you know, activity, don't do that. Right, the real, the real key is to actually tie it to what the business objective and goal is, and then focus all of the energy and efforts that way.

Nevertheless, it's really expensive to hire those people as employees. Right. And so that's, that's one of the challenges. The other is when you do bring on your own team obviously takes some time to build that team up, of course, and so that could be slow as well. So while it takes months to get the team on board, Well, you know, today's business cycle months are critical because Heck, just a few months ago, we were in a very different world right before COVID. Now, here we are a few months later. And wow, wouldn't it be useful if we could have continuous updates of our data and the analytics and the insights from that, and therefore make pivots and adjustments as a business. And so having an ongoing artificial intelligence, service or activity that keeps you moving forward on a recurring basis, that's actually one of the most efficient and effective ways to serve your business moving forward. Now, let's say that, you know, you did have your own team do it, then you're going to do at least these five or six steps, right? I've already mentioned determine your business questions, right. So what are my business questions number one, number two, you got to go in here. So it's number two, go in and clean up your data. And then number three, you need to pick some sort of AI algorithms right? And of course, the the data scientists and stuff such know that I'll throw out a few just to be nerdy. It could be a random forest, right? could be some linear regression, right?

And so forth, the end up looking at the nature of the problem to be solved. And you got to pick the right set of, of AI algorithms. So that's another step who I yeah. The next one is you execute those on that data, not once, but lots of times, hundreds, thousands of times actually running lots of tests. And you're building up these cases, eventually getting to a point where you start to see the patterns in the predictions, you begin to identify, but then that leads to the next step, which is now you've got a lot of these predictions and patterns, what are the most relevant and probable and beneficial to the business? And what can we even go do as a business right? Some of them may be rather esoteric. I can you're like, well, only do this if it's Tuesday in Belgium, well, what good is that? Right? So it takes some augmented intelligence with your artificial intelligence. And that's the way to use AI. It's not just, you know, rely on it blindly, right, but rather to leverage the human cognitive capabilities within as well. And so that leads to the last step, which is, you know, you go, go make your timely adjustments to your business. In the end. That's all a lot of steps.

And generally, the small to medium business owner doesn't have either the skill set or the resources or the time to do that. So one of the things that would strongly encourages you to look for an organization that can help you with that, as a small to medium business owner. And so that's, that would be one of the key takeaways from this. Know your business questions, figure that out, take a quick look, just what do I know about my data, and what's the state of it? But then identify a strong organization that can take all of those complex activities around, you know, identifying and cleaning the data. And of course, getting the right AI, algorithms, so forth, right, all of that grungy stuff that I described. They take care of those things. And what you get back then is something that, of course, helps you to move forward in your in your business. In the next few episodes, I will be bringing on some people, some organizations, which I've done this with, and we'll hear some of their experiences, lessons learned the good, the bad, and the ugly of this. What would be a mistake would be to not do anything. It's even more critical as a small to medium business owner to leverage what we have available to us our resources, the data, the things that are available to us, and figure out how on an ongoing basis, we can continue to prove how we serve our customers. And without leveraging or taking advantage of some of the technology available today, it actually ends up putting us behind the competition. We all know the big companies do this, right? Got the Facebook's and the Googles, and the Netflix's and so forth. They've learned the secret of how do I take advantage and leverage, right the data that's available to me so that it can guide where we go as a business. Well, it's time to do that now as a small to medium business owner. So hey, thanks again for joining and until next time, go get the oil out of your data.

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