Technology has forever been the driving force of flourishing businesses. It is a 360-degree evolution of technology that has changed the dynamics of businesses in the recent past.
Machine learning is the most sensational among all of them. So, before understanding how machine learning can shape your budding start-up, let us understand this nuance of technology a little more.
All the buzzwords, whether it is Machine learning or Blockchain, or Internet of Things, essentially boil down to one single entity, and that is – data.
There’s humongous amounts of data that is being generated on a daily basis, not only by us, but also by our machines – smartphones, computers, or any other devices.
If used efficiently, this data has the power to change the way we know the world.
The best part is – it’s potential is industry-independent.
However, the large amount of data is present in unstructured form, and needs to be processed and analysed to be able to derive meaningful information from it.
Traditionally, this was done by humans. But, now, as the volumes of data have surpassed human ability and we need machines to do the job. Machines can not only prove to be more efficient, but also more precise. That being said, how can you possibly program the machines to make sense of such a large volume of data? Short answer – you don’t have to.
That is what machine learning is all about. You do not require to explicitly program the machines, rather, they learn by themselves – through experiences.
This process is happening in our lives, just that it is not apparent. The examples are endless.
I’ll quickly give you some of them. I want you to think about this-
- How do your emails are automatically categorised into primary and spam?
- How do you receive personalized shopping recommendations on Amazon?
- How do you get personalised movie recommendations on Netflix?
- How does the face recognition feature in your smartphone work?
All of these are classic examples of Machine learning. Our machines are becoming increasingly intelligent by learning and adapting to our patterns. Every time you shop on amazon, the AI records your patterns, analyses it, and starts sending you related recommendations. Same goes with all the other examples. Here, you do not need to program them to understand your patterns, it is just happening.
Tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc. have been leveraging machine learning for a long time. But, with changing times, machine learning technology has shifted from being a luxury to being a necessity.
Here’s how ML is re-defining the start-ups –
- Personalisation – According to Gartner, by the end of this year, organizations that have fully invested in online personalization will outsell those that haven’t by more than 30%. Businesses need to know that there has been a massive shift from customer service to customer engagement. In a scenario like this, personalisation can play a major role in engaging the customers. If a business knows what its customers are looking for, it becomes easy to deliver it. Machine learning can adapt to the customers’-behaviour patterns and can fulfill their exact requirement.
- Decision-making– Decision-making is a routine work for businesses. The process is extremely crucial and involves a lot of time, effort, and precision. However, there’s only so much information the human brain can store and process. Thus, it’s becoming a regular feature to rely on machines that can store, process, and extract meaning from huge amounts of data in a way that humans cannot. For the most part, the more data the better. So, the start-ups are working not only to acquire more and more data, but also towards supervised learning, where a machine is taught to classify or predict by showing examples.
- Automation– There are a great deal of processes that require attention in the functioning of a business. It is important to keep this attention undivided. This happens when team members focus on more pressing problems rather than on the processes that can be automated. For example, instead of a customer support executive being present to serve the customers, businesses are relying on chatbots and automated calls to attend their customers 24*7*365.
- Enhanced security- Machine learning in this case is all about prevention, rather than cure. By analysing threats or any security breach in real-time, ML makes it easier to take action against it. It is used to detect malicious activity and stop attacks. In the near future, businesses will no longer depend on signature-based malware detection, they will rather shift to a machine learning system that interprets actions and events and learns from a variety of sources and then categorises what is safe and what is not.
- Transforming healthcare- Machine learning is also responsible for changing the mechanisms of healthcare. It wasn't possible until now to treat people from the convenience of their homes. However, the advent of telehealth, makes remote monitoring of patients possible. Healthcare startups can hugely benefit from this as remote treatment is much more cost-effective and requires less human resources when compared to traditional healthcare centers.
As already stated, Machine learning is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for growing businesses to make the most out of the massive volume of data available out there.
Are you still waiting?
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