Why your IT provider should be offering AI

When CIOs think of IT companies or technical project management companies, they likely think of the people scheduling techs to come out to sites across the country. Images of running cable, setting up wireless access points and managing technology closets might spring to mind.

These are all essential services, certainly, but they don’t exactly seem cutting edge—and that’s part of the problem.

Too often, companies write off “low” tech services and products. They chase after the admittedly impressive capabilities of the ever-evolving high tech sphere, but they don’t always take full advantage of the tech they already have at the fingertips and have already invested in, like IoT or simple point of sale systems.

It doesn’t have to be this way. These days, forward-thinking technical project management companies are integrating the capabilities of high-tech companies, especially regarding Artificial Intelligence or machine learning, with the services and products businesses use every day to do even more for their customers.

Here are three reasons you should be thinking about your technical project management partner when you think AI.

It shows how AI can work for you.

Connecting technical project management companies with AI solutions providers just makes sense, if you think about it.

Often, we’ve seen that businesses want AI, but they don’t really understand what AI can do for their business.  Combining the forces of a technical project management company and an AI technology provider solves that problem.

At CPT, for example, we’ve chosen to partner with Lucd because of the vast capabilities of their Enterprise AI platform and because of the fast deployment and easy scalability it provides clients.

We know our customers’ IT systems inside and out, so we can show them, for instance, how much data their point of sale system collects. Lucd’s system, then, can take that data and show the customer how to do more with it to get real results, like sales.

Together, the vague term AI becomes a very real—and easily deployable—solution for many businesses.

It allows you to cater to your customers.

It might seem obvious, but AI can help with sales. Really, though, it goes beyond that.

One of the top things we see at CPT is that businesses aren’t using POS systems to their full ability. If configured correctly, these can provide information on transactions as well as payroll, inventory and purchasing.

With an AI platform, businesses can take that valuable data and turn it into something more. For instance, with data from a POS system, AI can help with inventory management.

It can also help users in industries like retail, hospitality, finance and healthcare visualize customer behavior so they can provide more tailored services or products to increase customer satisfaction, customer retention and sales. For instance, data could show what menu items or sales bundles are least popular, so businesses could remove them and put more effort into producing things that customers value.

It can help prevent problems.

In the same way that AI can use data to predict “good” behaviors like sales, a good platform can draw on data to predict “bad” outcomes—so they can be examined and prevented.

AI can take in data from a system, like an IoT system, or a POS system. It can then be trained to detect anomalous behaviors, like an out-of-character order, or to make predictions about things like a possible failure of an IT component.

In that event, a company like CPT could deploy a technician to further examine a potential issue and make a determination on replacement for a part in a system—preventing downtime before it’s even close to happening.

It’s time to think differently about your IT vendor.

For too long, people have been looking at tech as two separate worlds—one that’s practical, on the ground and day-to-day; and one that’s theoretical, cutting edge and looking toward the future.

Really, they’re better together. So, the next time you think about what AI can do for your company, ask yourself—are you getting the most out of your IT service provider?