How Intelligent Applications Can Boost Sales

 CIOs can help management grow sales by proposing an intelligent application initiative. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

An intelligent application is software that integrates artificial intelligence capabilities with human decision-making, leveraging the best of both worlds.

AI and humans have different, yet complementary, natures. “AI excels at handling large volumes of data, making calculations quickly, identifying patterns, and performing repetitive tasks without error,” says Joseph Ours, AI strategy and modern software delivery director at Centric Consulting. Humans, on the other hand, have capabilities such as reasoning, critical thinking, empathy, creativity, understanding context, and making ethical decisions, he notes. “By combining the wealth of experience and expertise humans bring to the table with the power of AI’s analysis and pattern recognition, intelligent applications offer businesses a powerful tool to enhance multiple aspects of the sales process.”

AI at Work

One way an intelligent app can increase sales is by creating a personalized user experience. “This focuses on offering potential customers products or services that are applicable to them specifically, based on data obtained from prior user interactions, past searches, or surveys,” says Danielle Borisovsky, a manager in intelligent automation technologies at automation firm Reveal Group.

Lead prioritization is another way intelligent applications can help spur sales. Ranking leads based on potential value and conversion probability allows sales teams to focus on the most promising prospects, Ours says. “Elements helping to prioritize leads can range from prior history, strength of relationship, size of the deal, customer monetization value, or even the maturity of your product or offering.”

Perhaps the most popular -- and valuable -- intelligent application sales tool is forecasting. “By analyzing historical sales data and various market factors, AI-powered sales applications can generate more accurate forecasts, driving better decision-making, upselling, and cross-selling,” Ours says. “AI-based systems can identify complementary products or services, prompting timely recommendations to customers and increasing revenue opportunities.”

Intelligent apps can also be constructed as data analytics models that tap into historical data and predict which products or services a specific customer may be most interested in, based on demographic information such as city, age, or gender, Borisovsky notes.

Also available are intelligent tools that automate specific repetitive, time-consuming sales tasks and processes. “These processes include data entry, generating notifications, making pricing calculations, invoice generation, forecasting analysis, and industry research,” Borisovsky says. “Automating some of these tedious tasks enable sales representatives to focus more on human-centered activities and increase their time spent to ultimately work on what they do best -- closing deals.”