Last month, I was discussing with one of my customers. During the discussion, I found that Cloud and SaaS applications have changed the business landscape and helping Business Owners. Post-Cloud ERP solution, my Customer was saving around USD 2000 per month by not having Hardware and its maintenance, IT Persons, etc.

I was just wondering how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) could change the life of Business Owners and industries? Today we see them in every stage of our life, but can't distinguish them separately. They are part of our life.

 


How AI and ML are disrupting the industry?

AI, in the manufacturing industry along with IoT tools, is suggesting CNC Machines on what to produce, when to produce, and how much to produce. This has improved the efficiency and usage of machines, manpower, etc. The production line has become smooth without many surprises as the Demand and Supply are met by ERP and IOT as this decision information is passed to different touch points that would execute the same. Define standard patterns and the rest is done automatically. Hardware and its preventive maintenance are controlled and maintenance to AI, its Data Centre issues, and maintenance are impacted.

AI and ML are changing the way we are buying items, doing Sales, Buying rentals or selling houses, etc. Even dating applications are helping many to match and find the right partners. AI and ML are controlling Amazon's recommendation of books, Google's suggesting the right information or pushing Ads, etc. The jobs market is shrinking. A lot of mundane work is replaced with technical tools.

AI and ML have improved the life of online shoppers with the right messages, supporting information on additional items, etc. Now ML automatically learns the user patterns and suggests what to purchase. These tools have helped many online eCommerce companies to target the products to the right cohort of Customers and learn more about their purchase habits, when and where they can purchase etc.

Based on your "social" credit history few companies help to get you Loans or ensure that you get housing etc (Ant Financials)

AI tools have disrupted the Agriculture sector too. The activities that are too data sensitive, and difficult to sit and analyze have been simplified now. Now we can measure and monitor crop yields, productivity, soil fertility and lack of nutrition, etc. Many Agritech companies are depending on AI and ML to feed the data back to algorithms and see what happens.

 

How are our personal life is disrupted to make it simple?

Earlier, we use to hail taxis by the roadside or call Taxi Companies to book a Taxi. Now we use Apps and no more hailing by the roadside. UBER, Ola, and GoJek have changed the need to own a car and pay for the maintenance. Money saving is huge considering savings in car maintenance costs, insurance, parking charges, etc. This reduced the traffic on the road and got blocked during peak hours, saving millions of dollars in fuel.

Google is releasing the Driverless Car economy. AI's supervised learning helps to check the car's movement; surroundings, nearby cars, any other vehicles, etc. This is helping to protect the passengers and other surrounding properties. Already UBER is talking about buying these cars for their fleets and also developing its own Driverless Cars.

Airbnb and Oyo have increased the quality of the hotel's experiences, while prices are pushed down. OYO redefined the End user's experience at Hotel by uplifting the standard of rooms and services. Guest is ensured to receive the same treatment across multiple hotels. Now a day customers are NOT checking hotels' names and their credibility etc. The customer is checking whether the hotel is qualified by OYO or not. That assures the quality and minimum standard of services.

Many large companies that don't own anything, but they are controlling the majority of our life

1. Uber, Ola - Car services company, that integrated the distributed taxies

2. AirBnB and Oyo - Helped to integrate the smaller hotels and increased customer experiences.

3. Google - Search engine and Ads

4. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud - Provides the infrastructure to manage and run the applications at the fraction of the original cost of buying a server.

 

So what is happening here?

Many IT Jobs are already suffering. Development tools are reducing the number of Developers required, and Selenium tools are replacing Manual testing. We have built the tools that reduce the web application testing duration by 80%.

But the side effect of this is, many have lost jobs and income generation opportunities.

 

How Machine Learning works?

If you see the above business they don't own any properties, but they control the activities as they use AI and ML that give the information back to the application. One of the ways ML works is, it needs a huge amount of transaction data to analyze and arrive at the patterns and learn from them.

To make the Machine learning Algorithm work it requires a huge amount of data and feedback for it to create its own patterns, test, learn and deploy new ones. Many healthcare start-ups are using AI and ML to scan digitized reports and it feeds the data to AI and it's recreating the models for analysis.

Most ERPs are transactional ones. Thanks to AI and ML, Manufacturing Industry is changing. There is an opportunity to integrate AI and IoT with mundane ERP and it could be a powerful tool in the hands of the Business owner.

We developed a cloud solution, AcTouch.com, where the customer has an option to use the product while we manage all software upgrades, and regular DB backups and make sure that he runs their business without any problems.