Study results: The use of AI in digital commerce in Germany
In the Gartner study (accessible to clients only), 307 CIOs, business leaders, management level employees and other C-level executives worldwide were interviewed in June and July 2018 about the use of AI in digital commerce. Among the respondents were 31 companies from Germany. We have summarized the most important results for you in the graphic below.
Infographic AI Software in digital Commerce
As is well known, enterprise companies are ahead of SMEs in the implementation of new technologies . However, they show us the way and set trends that small companies will also follow, albeit at a later date and adapted to their needs and resources.
What does this mean for small and medium-sized enterprises?
Digital commerce and artificial intelligence are trends that are independent of factors such as company size and industry or the products and services offered. Customer needs and expectations are changing rapidly. The more companies offer their customers an improved shopping experience, the more companies that hold back on new technologies will suffer from competitive pressure. From the customer's perspective, they appear increasingly outdated - and they are unable to offer amenities that are standard in the competitive environment. Since profit-increasing effects are also not taken into account, there is also a risk of becoming unattractive in terms of price. Like every new trend, the use of AI in e-commerce is based on customer needs - those who do not keep up will ultimately be left behind.
the success of AI in digital commerce is measured primarily by the degree of cost reduction, in addition to customer satisfaction and sales. AI saves companies a lot of time and automates repetitive and manual tasks. This is cited as the second most important motivation for German companies to invest in AI. Use your employees for high-quality and interesting tasks and relieve them of manual, stupid tasks that harm employee motivation .
Many small and medium-sized companies wonder whether technologies such as AI are reserved brazil telegram data for large companies. However, the revolutionary rise of cloud technologies is making AI accessible to companies of all sizes . Setting up AI systems that require huge amounts of computing power in their own server room is almost impossible for small companies. The systems would not be able to operate in a high-performance and scalable manner. SMEs also lack the necessary know-how, employees and high-quality training data to train the system. According to our study results, even enterprise companies (according to the Gartner definition: companies with sales of over $50 million per year) struggle with challenges such as a lack of internal knowledge and problems integrating the AI solution into the existing infrastructure.
German enterprise companies use their own website by far the most for digital commerce and rarely rely on third-party providers due to the participation costs, as having your own website is the cheaper option in the long run. However, SMEs should work with third-party providers and use their know-how, infrastructure, knowledge and support. By outsourcing to a third-party provider, AI can be introduced into SMEs at an early stage and without much effort. Companies already have easy access to cloud-based AI services and the computing power required for them.
The success of the new technology is reflected in companies' willingness to invest. 97% of German companies that already use AI will maintain or increase the current level of investment in AI for digital commerce in 2020. A clear trend is emerging here for next year. Small and medium-sized companies will still need some time to reach the level of large German companies. However, the trend is moving towards AI regardless of company size, and the sooner companies engage with the technology, the more competitive they will remain in the highly competitive online commerce market.