In today’s extremely competitive business environment, keeping up with the best poses quite a challenge. Facing it requires companies to not only work out an exceptional strategy but also take proper advantage of the opportunities brought about by modern technology. Digital transformation and business process automation are becoming an everyday reality. In numerous sectors, it is becoming increasingly difficult to base a competitive advantage on them. This is where Composite AI comes in to take business process optimization to a whole new level. What is it, and what should get you interested in the possibilities it offers?
What is Composite AI?
Composite AI is a relatively new term that is still shrouded in a bit of a mystery for many entrepreneurs. However, it is definitely worth taking an interest in it as in its Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report, Gartner listed Composite AI as a trending technology already in 2020. Thus, we may assume that its time is just coming, and in the next few years, businesses will be happy to take advantage of this unique technology more willingly.
But what actually is Composite AI? This is hardly a new technology by any means. It is more of a concept involving broader and more advanced use of analytics to solve business problems. Once again, Gartner comes to the rescue with its definition, according to which Composite AI combines different AI techniques to achieve better results. The numerous techniques Gartner mentions in its definition allow Composite AI to go beyond machine learning. What is machine learning then? It is often associated with the term artificial intelligence, offering greater efficiency and versatility. Simply put, it allows its users to effectively address a much larger spectrum of problems that businesses face these days.
Composite AI vs. AI
In order to fully understand the concept of Composite AI, let’s take a step back and revisit the general concept of artificial intelligence. AI is an extremely broad term that describes machines capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, image recognition, and decision-making. All of these can be accomplished with a variety of techniques and methods. The realm of AI includes a variety of technologies, including:
- Machine Learning (ML) – an area of artificial intelligence that focuses on algorithms capable of learning through exposure to data.
- Deep Learning (DL) – a subcategory of machine learning involving the use of neural networks to perform natural perception tasks (such as identifying images or recognizing speech).
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) – a branch of artificial intelligence concerned with enabling machines to understand, generate and manipulate human language.
- Computer Vision (CV) – a field of artificial intelligence that enables machines to extract relevant information from images and video files, as well as to make decisions or recommendations based on them.
The idea of Composite AI implies using all of these technologies and more in order to solve a wide variety of business challenges, generate savings, improve products or help the business acquire new customers.
Read also: What is the difference between artificial intelligence and machine learning?
Why is Composite AI useful for businesses?
From a business point of view, implementing a new technology is an investment, and every investment should provide a high, preferably, rate of return. The benefits of Composite AI can be very diverse and usually meet this condition, enabling the company to take advantage of advanced analytics and generate profits.
Perhaps the most obvious use of composite AI concerns business process optimization and automation in order to drive operational excellence. While it is not at all necessary to turn to artificial intelligence to automate business processes, doing so can significantly improve the scope of processes that can be automated. Processes that require reading information from images or scanned documents are great examples – traditional tools and techniques fail to yield any improvement. AI effectively resolves all these issues while providing outstanding performance and very high quality.
There are many organizations across the breadth of highly regulated sectors, such as the financial industry – for whom errors, omissions, or delays can result in enormous consequences, mainly financial ones. By implementing AI-based solutions, these organizations can significantly limit the number of human errors while getting the most out of data. Things that are very difficult to discover with limited human resources, like identifying overlooked risks or areas with potential for optimization, are easier for the AI to spot.
Composite AI can also be used to foster innovation and creativity, improve the offerings of the company as well as its customer experience – think about chatbots answering questions posted by customers. As a result, Composite AI can effectively contribute to building competitive advantages and generating more revenue.
Read also: What can AI do for your business?
How to optimize your business operating with Composite AI?
The biggest advantage of Composite AI is its flexibility – this can be said without a shadow of a doubt. It is not a defined set of techniques that enable businesses to solve a narrow spectrum of problems and carry out a limited number of tasks. The concept ensures comprehensive selection of these techniques, giving the users the ability to create solutions that are fully tailored to the needs of a specific organization.
This is one of the many reasons why more and more organizations take advantage of the offerings of Composite AI. And there is no indication that this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. The potential benefits of feeding artificial intelligence with data collected by organizations mean that more and more companies are going to try and take advantage of its capabilities.
One of the key issues to resolve before taking that plunge requires ensuring the right system infrastructure in place, as well as fostering the right data culture. These days, data is the fuel that effectively drives growth. It is a catalyst for change to create new products, improve current offerings, enhance customer experience and ensure that the customer base grows rapidly. Composite AI, on the other hand, is what allows the organization to use its data in the most effective way.
Which industries can benefit from leveraging composite AI?
An increasing number of organizations are taking advantage of the benefits of artificial intelligence. More importantly, more and more of them are doing it well. Following in the footsteps of the best in the market is an idea that might be worth your while. Composite AI can be implemented in all organizations that already have a proper data culture in place.
Which specific industries already use Composite AI these days?
Retail
The challenges faced by this sector include effective inventory management, creating robust pricing strategies, and designing personalized promotional campaigns. In order to make the right business decisions and quickly respond to the ever-changing demand for particular goods in time, analyzing the constant flow of data coming from all points of sale in nearly real-time becomes a necessity. Composite AI enables retail companies to effectively address these challenges, not only by constantly analyzing the incoming data but also by forecasting future changes and recommending optimal actions.
Read more: 6 ways to use artificial intelligence in e-commerce
Medicine
AI techniques are already applied in many aspects of the medical field, but their potential remains virtually untapped. This is because advanced analysis of data enables not only more robust management of medical facilities – optimizing the use of resources, inventory, and purchasing, but also can offer great support to medical professionals in their everyday work. Some of the numerous examples include algorithms that analyze X-ray images, evaluate the effectiveness of treatments, as well as interpret test results. Using Composite AI in medicine improves the quality of services while helping medical professionals feel more comfortable at work.
Read more: What are the most important benefits of AI in the healthcare industry?
Finance
The finance industry is one of the sectors that rely very heavily on data, which offers a breadth of potential uses for Composite AI. These include automating numerous repetitive tasks, as well as mining various sources and documents (including scans and photographs) for data. Advanced analytics enable companies to better carry out their core operations, leading to better outcomes for their clients and customers thanks to portfolio optimization, as well as more effectively identify and manage risks and even detect fraud or suspicious transactions, thereby reducing the risk of fines from market regulators.
Read more: AI in financial services: What are the machine learning opportunities for finance and banking
Insurance
Some of the benefits of implementing Composite AI in the insurance sector include optimization and automation of many processes, as well as the ability to better respond to the needs of customers. Selecting the right policy for a given customer is one of the tasks where an AI can truly excel. In the blink of an eye, it can analyze all relevant factors, along with the customer’s data and insurance history, and select a policy with optimal coverage for the customer.
How to get started with composite AI?
In order to implement any solution in an organization, one should start by clearly defining the business problem at hand and the desired outcomes. Why? Composite AI is a flexible concept that envisages using a variety of AI techniques to achieve the best possible outcome. In order to properly build a pipeline of analytical methods to solve a specific business problem, a thorough analysis and getting hold of all the required data is necessary. This can be followed up by preliminary testing, which allows to verify the hypotheses and make sure that the designed solution really yields the intended benefits.
After successful testing, a pilot phase can commence. The aim of this stage is to verify the designed solution in a test environment. During pilot implementation, the company can make sure that the solution performs well in an environment that resembles the production one, which means that it can handle large volumes of data and generate the value expected by the business. The sign-off from key stakeholders is usually the start of the final stage of the project – the deployment and operationalization of the solution.
Deploying the solution, however, is not the end of the implementation process. While moving to a production environment allows the solution to generate added value for the business, it will always need to be continuously improved and adapted to the ever-changing business environment.
Read also: What are the things you must consider before implementing AI in your business?
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Key takeaways: How can composite Al help your business?
One of the key advantages of Composite AI as a solution is the fact that the results of a proper implementation are visible at a glance – this is particularly crucial when it comes to board members and the C-suite, who might have earmarked some funds for this particular project and hold you accountable for its outcomes and KPIs.
Composite AI is more than just complex algorithms that only software engineers can understand – it is a solution that brings about proper business improvements that have a measurable effect, making it much easier to report positive results and open up new avenues for your project teams, in particular in terms of negotiating a budget for further expansion. Thanks to their flexibility, Composite AI technologies can be tailored to the existing budget without having to worry that it will run out during the project. The tasks can be designed and implemented in stages – the completion of one stage does not prevent further growth and expansion of the toolkit contingent upon obtaining more funding. More importantly, the implemented solutions will eventually form a cohesive ecosystem.
The way you will use Composite AI in your organization should be matched to your business needs and data strategy. If you are looking to reduce the cost of operations, start with identifying the processes that you can optimize or automate with the help of artificial intelligence. Do you want to improve the quality of your products, boost your customer experience or grow your customer base? Advanced analytics can significantly facilitate the realization of your business plans and strategies. Define the problem you want to solve with the help of Composite AI and start working to boost your company and help it keep up with the competition.
