5 Point Checklist to Implement Artificial Intelligence in Your Business.

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Artificial Intelligence is everywhere and I am sure if you have not been under a rock, you have come across it.

And you want to implement artificial intelligence in business.

There is a multitude of applications where AI can kick ass in your retail, clothing and beauty business.

But the biggest question that I get asked, Where Do I Start?

Let’s break it down so you know where to start and 5 Tips that you should consider when picking an artificial technology for your business.

Before you start ….

Find a business problem that needs to be solved and then pick AI technology. (the right way)

Most businesses go the wrong way, the pick AI technology that looks cool and then try to stick it in a business problem. That is the wrong way.

There are a lot of AI technologies that exist and can be implemented in various steps in your business.

The graph below, gives

(Source: AI Demystified | Callaghan Innovation)

As you can see, AI can be used for search, chat, pattern recognition etc. and it can get overwhelming.

That’s why it’s very critical to find a business problem that you want to solve and then pick the AI tech to solve that.

Let’s consider an example that you have a Beauty company and sell Hair Color products.

for a typical business, there are multiple processes, and we can divide them into the front and back end:

eg:

And for this example, we are going to focus on “customer interactions”

When you are selling hair color products, one of the most critical questions that probably comes into the mind of your consumers is

How will this hair color look on me?

Because they don’t want to buy hair color that won’t look good on them, they want to make sure they can rock that color, right.

And your goal is to answer that question quickly & efficiently for each of your customers, so you can push them thru the purchase funnel.

There are two types of solutions for this problem:

1. Ideal Solution
2. Starter Solution

Before we look into what would be the Ideal and Starter solution and which one should you pick.

I want to go over my checklist of 5 points that I look into before evaluating an AI solution and you should do that too:

1. Time Frame
   • How much time would it take to implement this solution? eg: 1 week or 1 month or 3 months or 1 year.
2. Data Dependency
   • How dependent is this artificial intelligence technology on the data you are providing it in order for this AI technology to perform at a satisfactory level? i.e. would this AI solution need data from 1000 customers before it can perform at a satisfactory level or does it need data from 10,000 customers?
3. Infrastructure needed for implementation
   • Can you implement it yourself or would you need to involve engineers to get it rolling?
4. Technology risk
   • Artificial Intelligence is technology and technologies have bugs, they break down etc.
   • So, what if this AI technology stops working, how will it affect your business?
5. Approvals needed.
   • How many levels of approvals do you need? Your manager vs CEO?

So when you are evaluating a technology solution, run it thru this checklist to see where does it fall for you.

Let’s explore what would be an Ideal solution:

That your website or App uses Face Identification Artificial Intelligence solution that enables users to view their face & hair and see how that hair color would look on them.

Now if we run the Ideal solution thru the checklist,

1. Time Frame
   • It would take 6 months to a Year to implement the ideal solution.
2. Data Dependency
   • Hugely dependent on data.
3. Infrastructure needed for implementation
   • Its not a plug and play solution, you would need to involved engineers to implement it.
4. Technology risk
   • High risk because if your website or app has this AI technology stack and if it breaks, it would affect your business.
5. Approvals needed.
   • You would definitely need C-level approvals.

So, the IDEAL solution is not a quick way.

What about a starter solution?

What if you started with a ChatBot?

You can use the chatbot to answer customer’s questions automatically and as the chatbot learns more about the customer, it keeps getting better.

Let’s look at the 5 point checklist:

1. Time Frame
   • You can implement it in less than a week.
2. Data Dependency
   • Does not need big data.
3. Infrastructure needed for implementation
   • There are plug and play chatbots, so you don’t need to involve engineers to implement it.
4. Technology risk
   • Very low technology risk. If it breaks, for some reason, you can pause it or remove it and it would not affect your business.
5. Approvals needed.
   • You would probably not need C-level approvals. Your VP can possibly approve it, depending on your company structure.

And there are multiple companies that offer plug and play Artificial Intelligence-based chatbots (few listed above).

Conclusion:

Just because artificial intelligence technology is hot right now, doesn’t mean you have to implement it in your business.

Use the above-provided checklist to find out which AI solution is the best for your business and then choose accordingly. The sexiest solution is not always the best solution.

Questions: If you have any follow up questions, please do ask them in the comments and I’ll be happy to reply.

Video: I have also created a video tutorial and you can watch it here: