Advances in technology for business operations have been happening at lightning speed over the last ten years. Examples include improvements of outbound marketing efforts like digitally interacting with customers and tracking engagement, as well as improvements of internal operations, like human resources software for employee scheduling and payroll management.
Countering Unintentional Complacency
Having implemented and incorporated these advances into their daily operations, many companies have grown accustomed to running their business with the help of these “new” technological tools, believing they are employing top industry standards. This mindset, however, has created unintentional complacency because technology is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace.
One area in particular that has continued to make tremendous recent strides is artificial intelligence. While there are uncountable applications for AI, demand prediction for service-oriented businesses is providing a noticeable edge to those businesses that are utilizing the power of artificial intelligence. In comparison, businesses that continue to predict tomorrow’s demand based on yesterday’s traffic are always one step behind. With demand prediction software, AI is providing an individualized forecast based on a businesses’ internal data, as well as external factors like weather and economic conditions. All those different factors combined create an accurate prediction model of what customer traffic will look like in the near and far future. And what’s more, some of these software applications are even able to create employee schedules based on the generated prediction model.
Understanding the Benefits of AI
So while some may think that AI scheduling is nothing more than a fancy attempt of reinventing the wheel and therefore decide to bypass it, it is important to understand that there is so much more what AI-powered software is offering. As a matter of fact, artificial intelligence is not reinventing the wheel, it’s getting rid of the wheels. All of them, because they are old and start to break down. Instead, AI is providing wings that accelerate productivity and performance.
Businesses that have a good handle on their upcoming demand are better equipped to serve their customers, as they are prepared for any potential demand increase by being staffed accordingly. Along the same lines, employees’ workloads are more balanced, as over- and understaffing are being practically eliminated. That makes for both, more satisfied customers and happier employees.
Getting Rid of the Wheels
You may assume you’re on top of today’s technological offerings, but if you’re running a service business with fluctuating demand and are not using AI prediction and scheduling software, you are definitely missing out. The easiest way to get ahead of the competition is to get rid of the old, broken wheels and look into how AI-powered software can give wings to your business – because there’s so much more to scheduling software than filling in boxes!
Author: Jakob Lex
Originally from Chicago, Jakob is a Junior at BYU studying Genetics, Genomics, and Biotechnology with minors in both Business and Scandinavian Studies. Since January 2021, Jakob has been a marketing intern at Weave Workforce, a labor optimization company, providing AI-based forecasting and scheduling to match the fluctuating demand of service-oriented businesses.
