Competitive intelligence includes gathering and analyzing information to identify opportunities, threats, and risks. It is a very important concept because it enables a business to have a better comprehension of its competitive landscape to achieve a competitive edge. In these digital days of big data, integrating new technological innovations such as AI and ML into your competitive intelligence program can be a game changer because of the several benefits that abound.
Benefits of Integrating AI Into Your Competitive Intelligence Program
Artificial intelligence software applications are powerful tools that help accelerate business growth. Companies are increasingly adopting AI to stay competitive in a business landscape that is constantly evolving. This explains why 64% of B2B marketers see AI as a valuable asset for their marketing campaigns.
Uncover Hidden Opportunities in the Market
61% of business leaders credit AI with helping them uncover new business opportunities. AI-backed competitive intelligence programs provide businesses with enhanced market and customer insights that enable them to have a greater understanding of market conditions or dynamics.
With AI, you’ll not only have accurate knowledge of market responses to socioeconomic changes but also how you can capitalize on any situation to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, insight obtained from an AI app can help a business observe profitable gaps in the market and determine how to go about filling the gaps.
Streamlines Competitive Intelligence Efforts
Investing in artificial intelligence for competitive intelligence will help you streamline your business operations in many ways. This enables you to satisfy both your customers and employees, in addition to staying ahead of competitors. Below are a few ways AI can help you streamline.
Chatbots
Keeping customers happy is an important aspect of business management. When a customer is unhappy, he or she is 2 to 3 times more likely to damage your business with bad feedback and you’ll need at least 5 positive feedbacks to dampen the effects of that one negative feedback.
This implies that it is in a business’s best interests to devise strategies aimed at maximizing the customer experience at all times because good ratings from happy customers are a sure way to have a competitive edge. An effective way of ensuring customer satisfaction and happiness is through the use of AI-powered chatbots.
A chatbot will help you automate repetitive administrative tasks, such as filing and scheduling appointments. They are also programmed to read and comprehend customer queries and provide appropriate answers to such queries. All in all, chatbots will help a business significantly lower customer waiting times, provide 24/7 customer chat support, reduce operating expenses, and free your human customer support staff to engage in other productive tasks.
Optimized Recruitment and Enhanced Employee Satisfaction
Apart from helping to increase customer satisfaction and happiness, an AI-backed competitive intelligence program can also help maximize the employee experience for increased job satisfaction, productivity, and profitability. 70% of workers in the U.S. would like to integrate AI into their job roles to some extent. Utilizing AI can boost employee satisfaction and experience, helping you to retain your best staff and reduce employee turnover. Furthermore, AI can be deployed to track the performance of employees as a basis for rewarding, penalizing, or training them to ensure increased productivity.
With companies always competing for the best talents in the market, AI-compliant businesses have an edge when it comes to designing efficient recruitment strategies to shortlist and select the best possible candidates for employment. For instance, a company faced with a plethora of applications that will take a lot of time to process manually can leverage AI to do an accurate pre-screening of the many applicants with the aim of whittling down the lot more speedily in addition to providing vital information needed to select the most suitable candidate(s).
Provides a Competitive Edge With Real-Time, Accurate Data, and Analysis
The OECD notes that:
“Data is at the core of any AI application, and the deployment of AI, ML models and big data offers opportunities for increased efficiencies, reduced costs, and greater customer satisfaction through the delivery of higher quality services/products.”
Traditional data science and data engineering often fall short of enhancing business outcomes and delivering expected ROI. Challenges include organizational and technology silos, business adoption, strategic alignment, scale, and speed, among others. A modern AI-backed competitive intelligence model can help you address these shortcomings.
AI and ML-based analytic solutions often include real-time capabilities, adding a new dimension to business and competitive intelligence. Though older models will still be relevant in terms of providing key reports and analysis to business leaders, managers, and other senior decision-makers, real-time analytics facilitates information access to workers “on the front lines,” thus helping to induce hour-by-hour improvements in performance.
The Bottom Line
Businesses operating in today’s digitally driven environment need to integrate AI into their competitive intelligence programs. This is because the various benefits of AI and ML are simply too numerous to ignore for any serious business wishing to maximize utility and minimize costs. With AI, companies can uncover hidden opportunities in the market, streamline competitive intelligence efforts, and enjoy a competitive edge with real-time, accurate data and analysis.
In summary, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms help users analyze market data to identify patterns and trends. They act as effective surveillance mechanisms for multiple sources, ensuring timely access to important information, data, and updates about your market or industry.
