The use of Artificial Intelligence in Business

Hi everyone, 

Welcome to my final blog :( 

In this blog I will discuss what businesses are currently using artificial intelligence for. To further my knowledge on artificial intelligence I watched several videos. One video which I found to be very informative is linked below. It outlines the power of AI in business. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bPu8gvCKhQ

I will now discuss three uses for artificial intelligence in business: 

Automate tasks: Businesses have been using AI to automate tasks for quite some time now. Examples of these tasks are online customer service and emails. Businesses can have AI send automated messages back to any issues outlined by customers on their customer service webpage. This AI is known as chatbot. Businesses can design automated messages based on keywords used in regularly asked questions. The same can be done for automatic emails. These tasks are very time consuming, therefore, businesses who have successfully integrated AI to assist them with these tasks are expected to have seen a growth in the overall productivity of their business. This is due to staff having more time to complete other tasks, as customer service and emails are no longer a concern of theirs. 

Gather and improve data: Businesses have also been using AI to gather and improve data. AI can be used to scan documents, payments, purchases, messages, online posts etc., to gather data and store it one place. If a business is looking to improve their services they would need data to reflect on in order to make changes. With the help of AI this data can be gathered almost instantly. When AI has gathered data, it can then analyse it and notice any patterns, behaviours or trends within the data. These can be used to improve businesses by making their services more relatable to the patterns, behaviours or trends that AI has found. AI can also create solutions and make suggestions as to what changes may work best for a business.

Decision making: Businesses have also been using AI for decision making. Relative to the previous point outlined above, businesses have been using AI to make decisions based on any data that they may have. AI can analyse any information provided to it, finding the best possible way forward for businesses. An example of this would be with consumer specific data. AI can determine what decisions to make in order to make the businesses products/services more relative to each consumer. This gives businesses an opportunity to build consumer loyalty, ensuring that they provide the highest quality products/services.

Post a comment below outlining your thoughts on AI and whether or not you think it will have a positive/negative impact on society. 

My final blog has come to an end. I would like to thank all of my readers for spending your time to read my blogs. I really enjoyed creating them and I hope you enjoyed them too!

Goodbye! :(

 

Search Engine Optimization

Hi everyone, 

In this blog I am going to advise 10 tips which have been proven to boost website ranking, in order to boost the quality and quantity of traffic to a website generated from search engines. 

If you are unsure of what search engine optimization is, or if you need to refresh your mind before I go into more detail, I have provided a link to a short video below which clearly outlines what search engine optimization is. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd0ypO9MTWY

Now that we are all on the same page, the 10 tips I advise are as follows: 

Keywords: Keywords can be used to improve your website ranking. Generally, when individuals are searching online for a specific thing they will search using keywords in order to find a suitable source easily. Having these keywords on your website will boost your website ranking and ensure that your site will appear in more searches.

Expertise: Showing that you have expertise in a specific area will boost your website ranking. Algorithms are used to decide which website is best suited for each search. These algorithms can be based on the time users spent on your website. Providing expert knowledge reduces the chances of users clicking off of your website too soon, therefore affecting your website ranking.

Regular updates in content: It has been proven that websites which are more frequently updated appear higher in searches. This can be taken advantage of by regularly updating the content on your websites. 

Ensure content is worthy of being linked by other sources: This tip links in with the two previous tips above. If your content shows a level of expertise and if it is not outdated, it will be worthy of being linked by other sources. Sources may recommend your website, therefore boosting your website ranking.

Mobile phone friendly: According to a research conducted by HitWise, almost 60% of all online searches are searched using a mobile device. Therefore, it is important for websites to be designed for both desktops and mobile devices. 

Website speed: According to a study conducted by Neil Patel, pages that rank at the top of searches are pages which tend to load significantly faster than other pages. Ensuring that the loading times of your website are as fast as possible will boost your website ranking.

QR Codes: Using QR codes to give access to your websites provide an easy way for individuals to access your webpage. The more visitors there are on your website, the higher your website will appear in searches.

Social media marketing: Using social media marketing to gain followers/subscribers is a great way to increase your overall audience. From this you can link your social media accounts to your website which will boost your website ranking.

Content marketing: Similarly to social media marketing, posting content on other platforms is a great way to increase your overall audience. You can then link this content to your website, increasing your website ranking.

Influencer marketing: Influencers are a great way of increasing the popularity of your website. Influencers can promote your website through their services which will increase the traffic to your website. Choosing an influencer who posts similar content to the content on your website is important to ensure the traffic coming to your website will be interested.

That is all from me in this blog. Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments below any other tips that you may have. Keep an eye out for my next blog which will be my final blog :(

See you next time!

E-Commerce and Internet Technologies

Hi everyone, 

In this blog I will review three internet platforms which I believe can be easily integrated into a business's website to help them engage in e-commerce. The three businesses are a new gym, a new clothing boutique and a café. 

A New Gym: For a new gym I would recommend an internet platform called 'GloFox'. GloFox is an internet platform with the main purpose of assisting businesses, through providing them with easy to use online services. GloFox will allow customers to book classes and make payments easily through their online services, saving the stress of arriving at the gym unsure of space to attend classes. This also allows the gym to easily keep track of bookings and payments as GloFox will gather and store this data so a gym can easily access all of these records. GloFox allows businesses to customise their app to suit their branding, ensuring that customers feel like they are part of the gyms team, whilst also ensuring that the branding of their gym is getting as much publicity as possible, further increasing their potential audience. GloFox provides the option for businesses to target their customers by sending them automatically generated updates through push notifications. This will help keep customers engaged with the gym and it's services, leading to customer loyalty in the future.

A new clothing boutique: For a new clothing boutique I would recommend an internet platform called 'Square'. Square is an internet platform with the main purpose of assisting businesses with selling their products/services both in-store and online, whilst also managing invoices and inventory. Square allows businesses take payments, manage staff and conduct business both in-store and online. This is important for a new clothing boutique to take into consideration as in modern society online shopping is becoming more familiar to people. Being able to purchase products/services from the comfort of your own home provides satisfaction to customers. In order for a new clothing boutique to stay on track with this trend, it would be beneficial for them to integrate a platform like 'Square'. Square will allow the new clothing boutique to design an easy to use app where they can sell their clothes and also inform customers of in-store availability. It will allow the clothing boutique to link any other services they have to their app to ensure consistency across all of their online platforms.

A café: For a new café I would recommend an internet platform called 'SumUp'. SumUp is an internet platform with the main purpose of making online and in-person transactions easier and cheaper for businesses. SumUp will allow the café to accept payments from all different sources such as contactless or via inserting a card and presenting a pin. These payments can be made online or in-person with SumUp and all payments can be tracked as SumUp will gather and store all of this data, allowing the cafe to access any of these records whenever needed. SumUp also provides cheaper transaction fees, ensuring that the cafe will be saving as much as possible through using their services. 

That's all for me in this blog. Thanks for reading! Leave a comment below outlining if you believe these internet platforms would benefit the businesses above. If you have any other thoughts/recommendations, I would be glad to hear them! 

See you next time!

It is all about Engagement!

 Hi everyone, 

Welcome back to my blog. In this blog post I am going to outline some advice on how to get readers engaged in your blog posts. 

This advice includes:

Social media: A starting point to get readers engaged in your blog would involve giving them access to the blog itself. You can use social media to let people know that you have posted a new blog, providing a link. These gives readers ease of access to your blog and is sure to help with getting them engaged. 

Strong title: In order to get individuals to find interest in reading your blog comes down to your title. A strong title can be a deciding factor in whether or not a reader chooses your blog or stays scrolling. A strong title should clearly outline what content the reader should expect to see in your blog, giving a clear indicator to show if the blog is relevant to what they are searching for. 

Use of pictures & videos: Pictures and videos are a great way to getting readers more engaged in your blog. Pictures can be used to also give insight into the content covered within the blog, but can also be humorous and bring a fun and enjoyable sense of humour to your blog which can increase engagement. Videos can be used as a refresher to the content covered in your blog or as a follow up to your blog if the readers are interested in learning more about the content.

Avoid repetition of words/phrases: Avoiding using the same words/phrases throughout your blog post aids in keeping a readers attention. If the readers finds your blog to be repetitive it may lead to them feeling uninterested/bored and cause them to stop reading. 

Advise readers to read recent & future blog posts: A great way to keep readers engaged in your blog posts is to recommend them to read any recent blogs that you have posted. This gives the reader an option to read similar blog posts and further their knowledge and understanding on similar topics/points of interest. Asking them to stay tuned for future blog posts is also a great way to keep them engaged in the long run.

If there is any more advice that you think I missed leave a comment below. I would love to hear your thoughts on engagement in blog posts.

That's all for me in this blog. If any new readers find interest in my blogs, check out my previous blog where I gave an insight into 'Big Data'. There are many more blogs to come so keep an eye out! 

Big Data presents several potential ethical and social challenges

Hi everyone, 

In this blog post I will discuss Big Data. One of the largest concerns about big data is the potential ethical and social challenges that come with it. This blog post will outline and explain the reasoning of these potential challenges.

Before outlining the challenges, I have noticed the personalisation of advertisements on my social media accounts being very accurate to my interests, with sports and gaming advertisements appearing most frequently. This data has been gathered by these organisations and used to personalise my accounts to make them more relatable to me. I am sure you can notice this personalisation yourself across your social media accounts. In my opinion, it is not a surprise that ethical and social challenges may arise from this as individuals may feel like there is no limit to the information an organisation has gathered and is holding.

Potential challenges include: 

Privacy: Big Data gathers information about every aspect of a person. Sometimes it may feel like the data gathered does not have a filter and people may feel that their privacy has been disregarded. The data gathered can be seen as too personal or sensitive.

Consent: Consent is very important and must be confirmed before gathering any data. Big data gathers information from several different sources. This may lead to individuals feeling that they have not given the consent to the advancements made by using their data. Once again, the personalisation aspect may become too personal or sensitive for individuals and this can cause issues to arise.

Security: As there is a large volume of data being gathered, concerns may arise as to how secure it is. Hackers are becoming more prevalent in modern society with issues like identity theft occurring more often. Therefore, it is a challenge to keep up with the security of individual's personal data as technology is advancing at a very fast rate. We can assume that with technology advancing, it is more likely for data to be breached for unethical reasons.

When researching further on this topic, I came across a video that I believe outlines how each of these three challenges may have been breached. The video outlines a potential situation where an individual is accessing free Wifi at a store. When accessing the service the user is required to provide their email address, or log in using a social media application of their choice. When providing this, there was a box to tick if the user wanted to opt out of being tracked by the server. If a user was in a rush to access the Wifi they may have skipped past this. This allows the server to gather and sell the user's data. Over time, the amount of emails from different services increase and it becomes a constant spam. 

Potential services where free Wifi is provided are your local shopping centres, pubs, and fast food restaurants. This collection of data can affect anyone. Be careful!

Video Link: Ethics and trust in a digital age: Big data and analytics - YouTube

Leave a comment below outlining any experiences you have had where you feel that Big Data may have invaded your privacy or security. I would love to hear your thoughts!

See you next time!

Building CRM knowledge and earn credentials

Hi everyone, 

This week I completed three online courses provided by Trailhead which further educated me on my topic of interest which was Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is becoming more and more prevalent in our day to day lives so it is a topic that I find interest in. 

If you are interested in completing some online courses yourself, click on the link below which will give you access to 'Trailhead' and their services. I would recommend it! 

https://trailhead.salesforce.com/

The first course I completed was a 10 minute course called 'Getting to know Marketing AI'. The course was more of an introduction to marketing AI, where I learned how AI is used to benefit marketing by increasing creativity and efficiency. I learned how AI can be used in content/campaign creation to increase creativity. GPT can provide you with ideas for your content or campaign in seconds, therefore increasing both creativity and efficiency. Another interesting use of Marketing AI was through conversational interfaces, which can manage marketing campaigns and simplify the use of technology throughout the campaign.  

The second course I completed was a 20 minute course called 'Change Management for AI Implementation'. When completing this course I noticed a lot of similarities to the content covered in class about the implementation of new information systems. This course focused on change management which is a set of processes used to ensure the successful implementation of AI into an organisation. I learned that before beginning the process, organisations must train their staff, outline possible challenges they may face, ensure AI is suitable in the long run and aim to have consistency when it comes to where AI is used in their workforce. 

The third course I completed was a 30 minute course called 'Artificial Intelligence for Marketing'. This course provided short videos with examples of email marketing and push notifications being used. I learned how AI can be used to send automatic emails, personalise the emails and gather data on customers. I learned that the more customers interact with the emails/notifications the more personalisation organisations can achieve, therefore increasing brand loyalty. 

If you completed any online courses provided by Trailhead, let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear what your recommendations for other readers and what you learned in the process!

That's all for me in this blog. Thanks for reading! If you found interest in this blog, keep an eye out for many more blog posts in the future. 

See you next time!

Enterprise Applications

Hi Everyone, 

This week I researched 'Enterprise Applications'.

If you need a refresher on 'Enterprise Applications', what they are or how they are used, check the video linked below. This video clearly outlines a description on enterprise applications and the complications that they resolve. It will help give you a better understanding of the content covered in this blog. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAM-L41UJhA

After watching that short video, I will now discuss 3 examples of companies that used enterprise applications successfully to support their business strategy and business model. 

The first example is 'Apple' who use the enterprise application 'SAP'. SAP is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software which manages business processes, develops situations that facilitate effective data processing and information flow across organisations. (SAP, 2023). According to (Pereira, 2023), Apple's business model focuses on selling it's products and offering services through subscriptions. Apple's business strategy consists of them focusing on product design and functionality, strengthening their ecosystem, improving their customer service experience and finally, reducing their reliance on iPhone sales. (Singh, 2023). Apple use SAP for their online services such as iTunes, their app store and Apple TV, whilst also using SAP's services for their finance and HR departments. SAP allows Apple to come closer to their customers and build strong relationships with them. (ERP Research Knowledge, 2023). This aids Apple by making online service subscriptions more appealing to potential consumers and increases the overall flow of their services and departments.

The second example is 'Spotify' who use the enterprise application 'Salesforce'. Salesforce is a cloud-based software which allows businesses to connect with their customers, find prospects, close deals and provide a better service to their customers. (Salesforce, 2023). According to (Pereira, 2023), Spotify's business model focuses on being an audio streaming and media services provider. They operate on a freemium business model, providing some of it's services for free, but charging for other 'premium' services. Spotify's business strategy consists of them focusing on customer service, providing the best possible music streaming services at a rate with high availability. (Spotify, 2023). Spotify use Salesforce to keep track of every customer and every song played. Salesforce allows Spotify to manage a growing catalogue of millions of tracks, enabling Spotify users to listen at any time they desire. (Spiceworks, 2015). This aids Spotify by ensuring their operations are run smoothly, reducing risk of tracks not being available to users, whilst also allowing them to keep track of online users and the most popular tracks.

The third example is 'Vodafone' who use the enterprise application 'Oracle'. Oracle is a relational multi-model database management system which offers scalability, performance, availability, backup/recovery and security to companies. (Pedamkar, 2023). Vodafone's business model focuses on improving it's competitive advantage and returns, by improving customer trust and engagement, transforming it's current model and improving the usage of their assets. (Vodafone Group plc, 2023). (Vodafone Group plc, 2021) outlines that their business strategy consists of their aims to be the new generation connectivity and digital services provider for Europe and Africa. They aim to enable an inclusive and sustainable digital society. Oracle allows Vodafone to modernise its thousands of databases, build new cloud-based applications faster and launch them into several markets simultaneously. (Bossi, 2022). This aids Vodafone by ensuring that their databases will be secure and that their goals of playing a large role in the new generation of connectivity and digital services can be achieved.

That's all for me in this blog. Thanks for reading! Be sure to let me know your thoughts on this topic below in the comments. If you found interest in this blog, check out my previous blog where I analysed 'Information Systems'. 

See you next time!