Ask Neadom

Hey guys, this week on "When You Need 'Em, Ask Neadom," we're gonna talk about artificial intelligence.
"How do I use A.I. in my business?"
"Oh my God, they're gonna take over the world! Help me!"

What is AI

Hey guys, this is Neadom Tucker, owner of Kotori Technologies. And today, we're gonna talk about artificial intelligence.
"How does it help my business? How can I use A.I. in my business today?"

Now, you don't have to be a Fortune 50 company. You don't have to be a Fortune 500 company to use A.I. There's a lot of systems and software applications out there to help you use A.I. in your business today, and I want to share with you a couple of them on what we use internally to help us in our business, and how we use artificial intelligence to get us going.

A.I. is not, you know, Terminator, Skynet coming online, the robots taking over the world. It is a technology that's really used by a large number of computers or devices to try to look at data and make decisions on it. And that's really it.
Is this a new item? Is this an old item? What do I do with new items versus old items? Have I seen this before? What do I do with this now that I've seen it again? Making decisions like that.

Machine Learning

A.I. is kind of a culmination of a lot of things. Machine learning, some terms called deep learning, and some other things we've heard kind of on the net. So artificial intelligence just is a way for you or an application to take data information and make decisions upon it, right?

AI Integration

So, that's what it is. So, the next question. Where do I get started with that? How do I get A.I. integrated into my business?

So, I'm gonna give you an example. In our company, we use an accounting service called Botkeepers. They use A.I. in their business to automate the entry of accounts payable and accounts receivable into their system.

If we have a vendor that wants to send us an invoice, we have an email address that goes into, the A.I. bot checks the email account periodically, sees that there is a new email address, it sees that there's a PDF file, it scans the PDF file for the information, and looks for specific things like invoice number, invoice date, the company name, it looks at the invoice amount, the due date, it looks for all this information on the form, and then it takes that data and puts it in a database and then enters that data into our accounting package.

Other Uses of AI

That basically saves a human from having to do that. I mean, that's a great kind of use of what A.I. does, and then it can remind you about certain things, that you've got a bill due, or things like that, and that's really kinda how we're using A.I. in our business right now.

But there's so many other things that A.I. can be used for to make decisions. We're seeing a lot in the closed-circuit TV or the CCTV, or security camera business, where A.I. is actually used to determine traffic patterns for people inside of stores.

This is something that Walmart and Home Depot uses to track traffic patterns in stores to see where traffic patterns go and then make decisions about, you know, maybe we'd best to have information at this part of the store versus that part of the store.

I don't know how many Walmart's you've been to, but if you ever go to Walmart to get bread and milk, or beer? Beer and the milk are all the way at the back of the store. Why do you think that is? Because most people that come to Walmart have to walk all the way through everything at Walmart to get bread, or milk, or beer, and things like that.

So anyways, that's really where you can start your business. Look at your accounting system, talk to your vendors that you're using, how they can kind of help you integrate, and that's the cheapest way for you to kinda go.

Cost of AI

All right, so the last one. So, what if you want to use A.I. in your business? What does it cost to use A.I.?

It's actually really inexpensive. I mean, they've got A.I. engines and machine learning engines inside of Amazon, Azure, Google. These cloud providers have got these solutions inside their systems, and they're relatively inexpensive.

The cost comes into learning the technology or hiring a company to help you integrate the artificial intelligence in your business. And so, you gotta be really serious that this is something you're gonna wanna do inside your business.

It's something that you can generate revenue on, or if you've got enough revenue, it's something that's gonna help you significantly cost save, or do analyzation of data to help you increase revenue somewhere else.

So, if you're a small business owner, I'd really look at your vendors to see who is using A.I. there, or they can help you, kinda like we're talking about Botkeepers, and what they do. Bill.com is in the process of introducing some A.I. as well into their systems.

So again, small business owners, look to your vendors. If you're really looking to expand your organization, and kinda move towards the next generation and wanna make some revenue, take a look at Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft's Azure to kind of help you get started.

Conclusion

Well, that kind of sums up another week of "When You Need 'Em, Ask Neadom."
If you have any more questions, hit us online at http://www.kotoritechnologies.com, let us know if you've got any questions, and until next time, you guys stay safe out there.
See you again.