From digital assistants, facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, medical diagnostics, human-like robots – artificial intelligence is everywhere.

Artificial Intelligence refers to the use of hyper-intelligent algorithms to enable a computer program to learn and think. To put it simply, AI is everything that uses a program to execute something that would ordinarily rely on human intelligence.

With a capacity for enormous benefits, Artificial intelligence solutions hold the potential to revolutionize any professional sector. Here’s a look at a few of them.

No scope for human error

Human beings are prone to error from time to time, no matter their level of expertise.  Machines, however, are error-free when programmed accurately.

Using Artificial Intelligence digital actions are implemented based on previously captured data by applying a particular set of algorithms.

This automatically reduces the margin of error. So any business using Artificial Intelligence solutions can achieve high accuracy and a greater degree of precision.

Round-the-clock availability

Typically, the average person works for around 4-6 hours per day, apart from break times.

Contrarily AI operates round-the-clock.

You don’t have to worry about your AI getting bored, demotivated or falling ill.

It functions without interruption or breaks and unlike humans, it has no downtime.

They have the ability to seamlessly cater to customers across the world in diverse time zones.

Digital assistance

Several organizations, of all shapes and sizes have wised up to the use of digital assistants.

This gives them the capacity to interact with their audience without the need for human resources.

Additionally, digital assistants are being utilized in a host of websites to cater to users’ needs.

People can chat with them about what they are looking for and much more.

Today chatbots are created in such a way that users would not even realize whether they are interacting with a chatbot or a human being.

Automates mundane tasks

On a daily basis a business has several repetitive, mundane tasks for instance, document verification, generic thank-you mails, spreadsheet reports and so on.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence solutions you will be able to effectively automate tedious tasks of this nature.

This will serve to free up your human employees to exercise their creativity and solve problems.

Swifter decisions

AI can be implemented in conjunction with supplementary technologies.

This would allow you to make machines come to decisions and even execute them, much quicker than would be possible for a human.

In the process of arriving at a decision an employee would take several factors in account both emotionally and practically.

Artificial Intelligence solutions however, operate on the basis of what it is programmed to do and this serves to speed up the decision-making process.

It’s evident that Artificial Intelligence creates a seamless collaboration between enterprise systems and individuals. An increasing number of organizations are adopting this powerful tech and driving sustainability for their businesses.

To clarify the concepts, while Big Data deals with content, cloud computing plays the role of infrastructure. The two technologies go hand-in-hand to yield excellent results. Considering the voluminous and sensitive nature of data sets, it’s crucial to keep it in a secure and orderly environment- that’s where the Cloud comes in!

As the Cloud is being adopted by enterprises large and small, these businesses are also beginning to leverage Big Data with marked success. The main market driver for the surge in big data adoption is the rise of the Internet of Things and the expansion of infrastructure-as-a-service in the global market. Cloud computing infrastructure gives you the capacity to easily process big data on your laptops and computer systems. Let’s dive into precisely how Big Data and cloud computing work together and what benefits they offer businesses globally.

The Relationship between Big Data and Cloud Computing 

More often than not both Big Data and cloud computing are bundled together and to understand why you’d need a basic understanding of these technologies.

Put simply, big data can be defined as large volumes of either structured or unstructured data, for instance, terabytes, petabyte or even higher volumes. Because of its extremely enormous volume, traditional software techniques and databases lack the capacity to process the data. A straightforward definition of cloud computing is that it involves storing and accessing data, files, and programs on the Internet, rather than your personal hard drive.

Using hardware virtualization, cloud computing offers the ability to store massive amounts of data through the means of scalability, availability and fault tolerance.  This in turn renders big data scalable, fault-tolerant and available thanks to cloud computing.

Remarks

The combination of these two fundamental technologies gives businesses that have brilliant ideas but limited resources, a strong possibility at ever-increasing success. The technologies also give businesses the means to leverage the data that they have previously captured but in the past had no way of analyzing.

This data is becoming bigger and bigger over time and springs from varied sources such as material supply chains, earthmovers, on-site workers, cranes and even the building structures themselves. Construction business owners are opting for dedicated big data strategy consulting to discover hidden patterns, complex correlations, and other valuable insights.

Let’s have a look at how big data is already being leveraged by the construction industry by examining the design-build-operate lifecycle that is increasingly being used for construction projects at present.

Design phase

In this phase, data including stakeholder input, environmental data, digital media discussions and historical reports can all be consolidated to determine not only what to build but also where it should be built.

The Ivy League school, Brown University in the US successfully used big data to determine the venue of its new engineering centre, to facilitate optimum benefit for both students and the university.

Additionally, historical big data is being studied to figure out probabilities and patterns of construction risks, in an effort to ensure successful construction projects and steer away from potential challenges. Armed with big data strategy consulting your construction projects will easily align with the project roadmap.

Build phase

Synthesized big data from sources like traffic, weather, as well as business and community-related activity, can be studied to establish optimized phasing of the construction plans.

Inputs from sensor-based machines on site, which gauge the active and idle time can be analyzed to reach decisions about the ideal mix of buying and leasing the equipment in question and the best way to use fuel efficiently to decrease costs as well as the impact on the ecology.

Fitting out the equipment with geolocation gives you efficient logistics, sufficiently available spare parts and eliminates any possible downtime.

Operate phase

Big data extracted from in-built sensors in bridges, buildings and any other structures constructed allows you to track their performance on various levels. Office blocks, smart buildings and malls can be monitored to check whether their energy conservation levels conform to the initial design objectives. 

Sensors will be able to gauge levels of flexing and traffic stress information in bridges and forecast any potentially dangerous outcomes. Data from this phase can also be entered into building information modelling (BIM) systems to set up maintenance requirements, when necessary.  

Big data and analytics are paramount to the future of businesses in all sectors. Construction business owners can harness this raw data and turn it into actionable insights. This gives them the capacity to make informed decisions and accelerate their business value.

For instance, analyzing sales data, where you observe the revenue generated per server, you will be able to figure out staffing issues that are impacting your restaurant’s profits.

Suppose one of your servers fetches a uniform amount of revenue throughout the week, yet only at particular hours there is lowered revenue, Big data strategy consulting will enable you to understand where the losses are occurring and during which time durations you would benefit from additional resources.

Similarly, you can extract data analysis from your CRM to gauge front-of-house insights like, why particular items are sold more than others, which customers placed which orders and how much quantity was ordered, and so on. These insights can be used to enhance your menu.

In addition, you can receive an insight into what menu categories, from beverages entrées, appetizers to side items are most ordered. You can focus your restaurant marketing around the popular items to get more engagement.

Menu Decisions

Based on valuable insights from your restaurant data analytics you can decide which items need to be re-introduced, which dishes to keep and which to discard as well as which meals should have discounts and promotions.

For instance, if there are a lot of orders for a particular dish, but you observe that no re-orders have come for it; you can probe deeper to find out the cause.

Restaurant businesses with a competitive edge make use of analytics solutions in a variety of ways, including:

1. Operations enhancement

2. Table turnover optimization

3. Customer profiling

4. Lifetime value and repeat guests trends

5. Sales forecasting

Labor Expenses

Labor ranks as one of the highest expense areas while running a restaurant, thus is it critical to calculate your labor cost Vs your total sales. Possessing the required analytics will allow you to learn which are the slower shifts and seasons and then you cut costs by hiring fewer resources in that span of time.

Loyalty Programs

Big Data analytics allows you to figure out the most ideal way to reward your loyal customers.

For instance, suppose a particular bunch of guests ‘checks-in’ and ‘tags’ your restaurant on social media each and every time they visit your restaurant, you would be wise to send them a reward for their loyalty using a social media site.

Guest Experience

Data like demographics, reservation habits, and order preferences give you the potential to customize the dining experience of your guests.

You can leverage your restaurant CRM’s historical data to study past and current trends and use that information to build customer profiles, listen to and improve relationships with your diners, and develop strategies for the future.

For those of you intending on leveraging big data strategy, here are some of the benefits that it could bring to your business:

Customer Service and Retention

The use of Chatbots is one of the most popular methods for businesses to deliver high-caliber customer service minus the usual budget, time and resources hindrances. Aside from chatbots another method through which big data can raise your business’s customer satisfaction is when it acts as a guide to ensure that you create intuitive products and services based on customer insights. Once you possess the right dataset you will be able to examine and figure out the features that your consumers have the highest preference towards and which features you should get rid of.

Security

Along with the rise in online transactions over the recent years, the percentage of fraud has risen considerably as well. Loss of consumer data because of a cyber attack would wreak havoc on the reputation of your business, and ultimately may also result in financial losses.  Big data gives businesses insights to deploy the correct software which has the capacity for heightened safeguards for sensitive data using a range of technologies like speech recognition, natural language processing, video recognition, automation and machine learning.

Marketing and CRM

Customization is an aspect that marketers consider high priority. Executing big data analytics strategically allows your business to enhance product data and forecast consumer preferences in a manner that significantly increases conversions. Today, merely reaching a large number of people is not the main goal. A top feature of marketing success lies in micro-targeting potential consumers most expected to make purchases at just the right time.

Human Resources

There’s no doubt the human resources management is ideally conducted allowing a human to carry out the final decision. On the other hand, personnel data analytics is an enormously useful tool for HR personnel in any business.

Data-driven AI programs are equipped to swiftly evaluate certifications, experience, education, skill sets, geography, job titles, background checks, social media activity and a host of other parameters to narrow down on the ideal candidates for a job position. The caliber of employees generated by such a rigorous procedure will undeniably be reflected in the competence and success of your business.

Data Sharing

The main role of data sharing is to link businesses to the datasets they would need to extract important insights. The best way for businesses to go about this is to incentivize consumers to voluntarily share their information after they have given their consent. After clear consent of the user, big data service providers can be licensed to businesses in the industry to allow them to hugely trim down research time and expenses.  It should be ensured that user data is kept safe and secure.