7 Ways You Can Use AI to Make Your Business More Efficient

In our 2024 SIA Security Megatrends report, we identified various artificial intelligence (AI) trends as the top four Megatrends, and generative AI was squarely in the mix. One of the elements we focused on was that while AI is poised to create sweeping change in security solutions (particularly in the video sector, where AI is converting “video surveillance” into “video intelligence”), AI is also equally applicable to solve core business challenges. With that in mind, here are seven ways you can apply AI to your business to make it more efficient.

·       Chat Support: One of the fastest ways you can deploy AI in your business is through AI-powered bots providing chat support. This may not be the most advanced form of AI applications but can be useful for helping your customers get in touch with the right team. Many businesses are using these chatbots to perform first-level triage-style chat support to understand whether support is needed for billing, technical support, sales or other key areas – or direct a customer to readily available info for a self-serve type of support experience. If support is needed at a deeper level, then the chatbot can hand off the chat conversation to real employees in the relevant department.

·       Sentiment Analysis: AI tools exist today that can detect sentiment analysis on your brand, and these are being applied in different sectors. Public relations software solutions can process various mentions to understand how your firm is being mentioned by social media users and media publishers. There are technologies that can also “record your call for training purposes” and then process the sentiment of the support conversations and others that can apply the same sentiment analysis when customers are interfacing with your chatbots.

·       Cyber Protection: One of the ways hackers may try to enter secure parts of your website or network is through credential stuffing, a type of brute force attack where the penetrator attempts to gain access by flooding your login with different credentials in hopes that they get it right. AI-powered algorithms are emerging that can distinguish this type of traffic from regular web traffic so that you are alerted when an attack is occurring. AI-powered cyber tools are also applicable to your network generally and can recognize early signs of possible intrusions or file tampering; these solutions are seen in the work that firms like SIA member Nova Microsystems are doing.

·       Routing and Scheduling Optimization: There are solutions on the market today that leverage AI to drive your dispatch team and improve service and installation truck rolls. While the technology has come out of the shipping and trucking sector (where they even have technology that is used for predictive maintenance given the mileage their vehicles must sustain), but the application for our industry is around efficient routing and scheduling so you can reach more customers’ sites faster with less drive time between brief service visits.

·       Productivity Hacking: AI tools can record your meetings and generate action items and notes. Fireflies and Otter.ai are two such tools in this area, and you may have already been on a Zoom call with one of them running. Challenged with scheduling? Tools like Clara and Motion provide support, and if you want to go even deeper in hacking your own productivity, search for tools like AI travel assistants and even AI financial assistants.

·       Write With AI: ChatGPT is the one you know, but there are other options like Jasper, Anyword, Writesonic, Cuppa, Grammarly, Writier, Copy.AI and a half-dozen or more AI engines to help you solve your writer’s block or simply improve your own writing. You might point your marketing colleagues to these tools or even use them yourself as a small business seeking to turn your ideas into written form. Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t say you should disclose when content is AI generated.

·       Image Creation: Just like writing, there are many tools that can upscale your images using AI. Some can take a basic photo (even a lower-quality photo) and generate various marketing images. If your business is making security solutions and hardware, this can be really applicable for your product marketing efforts. Companies like claid.ai and Pixelcut are doing this. You’ve likely been seeing the effect of this in the fashion industry for some time now, where clothing is placed by AI on various models and scenes at a quality that looks like they really did a photo shoot.

At ISC West (April 9-11 at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas), AI will take center stage both among the companies and products available for evaluation on the exhibition floor and, importantly, in the educational sessions.

For more information on the SIA Education@ISC program or to register, visit ISCWest.com.