AI: Getting Closer to Customers at Scale

In Linkedin.  Good thoughts, the integration of Cloud and AI ....

AI: Getting Closer to Customers at Scale
Published on January 31, 2017
by Steve Turner 

Introduction

The traditional challenge for businesses is to balance profitability with the need to provide value to many different customers. The larger the company, the more diverse customers are likely to be. Understanding the commonalities and differences of hundreds, thousands, or millions of customers can be nearly impossible with just marketing, sales, and customer service staff. It requires scalable systems to collect information, develop insights, and take action.

The premise of this rather long post is that businesses can get much closer to their customers through a combination of advanced technologies and a change in philosophy. Let’s briefly start with cloud computing technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, and business process optimization are becoming accessible to companies of all sizes as a result of cloud computing service models (see chart later in this post). The cloud gives users access to sophisticated algorithms, powerful hardware, and storage capacity at a relatively low cost, with little or no long-term obligations. ... "