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Author: Nicole Garrison

Why AI Drives Better Business Decision Making

Are you ready to trust AI to make decisions for your business?

If you’re unsure if AI is good enough for this task, you might be surprised by the time you’re done reading. No, I’m not going to convince you to dramatically change the way you make your decision making process, like, right away. That’s not the right way to go.

Instead, you’re going to see how AI is really used to make a difference for businesses. We’ll also talk about how entrepreneurs like you are benefitting by incorporating AI in the decision making process.

How to Incorporate AI in Decision Making the Right Way?

The hype around AI has generated a quite false impression that it’s a complete solution to decision-making. For many business leaders not ready to embrace the technology, this impression has played a final role in making the decision whether to try it.

In reality, things are a little bit different.

AI doesn’t make decision-making automatic. It gives you never-before-accessed insights to make the best possible decisions faster.

In other words, AI doesn’t take away your decision making privileges. It becomes your partner whose ability to generate useful business insights is superb.

Virginie Grandhaye, the offering manager for IBM Decision Optimization, has recently given a great interview where she explained how the process of AI decision making really works.

According to Grandhaye, the primary role of AI is to enable the business to use data “to both analyze and formalize the decision-making process.”

There are five success factors involved in making AI work, says Grandhaye.

AI Decision Making Process Success Ingredients by Grandhaye

  1. A good understanding of the problem faced by the business
  2. A team of experts knowledgeable of AI analysis methods such as machine learning
  3. Close cooperation with the business growth team. AI experts and decision makers should work together on data analysis to come up with the best solutions to a problem
  4. A data science platform to manage data, validate assumptions, and visualize models.
  5. Adequate capability to deploy. Having a platform for deployment makes it easier to monitor and manage the lifecycle of data models.

As you can see, AI experts and decision-makers need to work together to make the best out of the technology. The outcome of the cooperation will be the so-called “ intelligence decision.”

The biggest benefit of an intelligence decision, according to Grandhaye, is the ability to help businesses focus on a business need instead of having them dealing with algorithms and numbers.

Here’s how AI decision making does that.

How AI Improves Business Decision Making

1. AI Eliminates Cognitive Bias

Human analysis is inherently prone to cognitive bias, which has them focusing intently on irrelevant or wrong factors. It’s a really big problem just because of the sheer amount of them. Science says there are over 180 cognitive biases that could potentially affect your business decisions and steer you in the wrong direction.

A human decision maker is susceptible to all of them, especially when he or she is stressed, poorly trained, tired, or multitasking.


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Cognitive biases are bad for business,” writes Dr. Jim Taylor, an expert on the psychology of performance. [They’re] “most problematic because they cause business people to make bad decisions.”

AI, on the other hand, doesn’t have this problem. Its algorithms search for all connections and relationships in data, not just the ones that people want or need to see there.

2. AI Helps with Better Content Personalization

Content personalization is a must for online businesses to generate more traffic, leads, and sales. Deloitte says that 47 percent of online shoppers are ready to switch to a different brand after having impersonal experiences with a business.

BAtimes Nov25 20201

A business can personalize content well on a small scale, but doing so for thousands of customers might become a challenge. For one, analyzing their browsing behavior to create relevant content becomes incredibly time-consuming.

That’s where AI intelligence decision comes in.

An algorithm can:

  • Personalize content based on a user’s browsing history, purchases, subscriptions, or other characteristics
  • Help content creators by supplying them with insights into customer behavior
  • Create more relevant brand experiences for customers by managing content in real time (content sequencing).

AI decision making can significantly improve digital marketing campaigns.

A company relying on content marketing to attract leads, for example, can use the insights generated by AI to write more engaging and targeted blog articles.

Content marketing platforms like OneSpot use sophisticated algorithms to deliver content sequencing, i.e. showing relevant content at specific points in the customer journey. This approach helps to increase the ability of the content to engage customers.

3. AI Makes it Easier to Understand Customer Journey

The existing AI-powered tools can dramatically advance understanding of customer experience with a brand.

Here are some ways in which businesses are using them already:

  • AI-powered chatbots automate lead generation and improve customer service by making your business available 24/7 and gathering lots of customer data
  • Chatbots share content based on a customer’s interactions with a brand automatically through Facebook
  • Algorithms detect customers’ emotions in social media posts and analyze the brand perception
  • AI systems conduct up-selling and cross-selling in eCommerce to help to sell more
  • AI face recognition systems make online payments easier and faster
  • AI identifies and prevents eCommerce fraud by identifying subtle behavioral patterns in transactions.

The results are already pretty amazing. Amazon’s AI-based product recommendation engine, for example, generates 35 percent of the company’s total revenues.

4. AI Helps to Create Better Emails

Email marketing, the best-performing digital marketing channel, has just got an update thanks to AI. Today, businesses use mostly traditional email marketing tools to send automated messages and get more customers.

With AI, a lot more becomes available:

  • Write more relevant subject lines. The algorithm can generate personalized email subject lines to increase open rates. It evaluates the performance of previous campaigns and suggests specific line options based on best-performing ones
  • Automate distribution. AI takes email distribution one step further by allowing to send automatic emails based on the stage a customer is in their journey
  • Generate emails. AI is good at creating emails that look like they were designed by humans. Already many AI-powered email marketing tools can both automatically generate emails and suggest the most relevant content ideas for specific recipients.

Together, these benefits allow businesses to deliver personalized emails at any scale. Since online customers appreciate personalization so much, chances are good that businesses will see their email campaigns paying off nicely.

AI Decision Making: Faster and More Effective Processes

So, how do you feel about AI decision making now? The technology can clearly benefit your business by giving access to previously unavailable data insights and patterns. By the end of the day, you’re still in charge plus your decision can be much better informed.

Businesses across different industries are already making better decisions thanks to AI. It’s up to you whether your company should join them, but don’t take long to make your mind. Your competitors are exploring AI, too, you know.