In this article, I would try and shed some light on the practical and significant use-cases of AI in eCommerce and how your eCommerce business can leverage it at this moment in time!
There seems to be a lot of conundrum on the subject of AI in eCommerce, so let’s put an end to this discussion, once and for all, shall we?

5 Use-Cases of AI in eCommerce

1. Better Search Results

It has been observed that customers end up abandoning their purchase because often the product results displayed turns out irrelevant.
Through AI organizations are trying to display customer-centric search results that are relevant to their desired ask.  eCommerce websites are increasingly leveraging NLP (or Natural Language Processing) and Image Recognition to better comprehend user language and produce better product results.
Yandex, a popular search engine, successfully implemented some advanced applications of NLP and Deep Learning to optimize future searches with the help of the data of previous searches. This turned out to be a massive success as they were able to increase their click-through rates by almost ten percent.
Clarifai is trying to improve ecommerce by building smarter applications which can see the world as people would. In their words, “Artificial Intelligence with a Vision.” These applications enable the developers to build more intelligent apps and at the same time empower business by providing a customer-centric experience.

Pinterest is partnering with ecommerce stores for its new offering Pinterest Lens to find matching items in the store directly from their image on Pinterest. This is great from the standpoint where people generally abandon their search because they aren’t able to find the relevant product.
Developments such as these are not just helping businesses generate better revenues, but are also reducing customers’ journey.

Recommended Read: 5 Tips to Ensure Impeccable Security for Your eCommerce Business

2. Shopping Experience Level 1001!

How do you enhance the user’s shopping experience?
Make it as real as possible!
If you want to understand just how much Google knows about you, go check out your Google Maps Timeline!
The devices that you use collect and store a ton of information about you. This data is extremely valuable as the right type of information can enrich and improve your shopping experience.
Deep Learning and Machine Learning technologies are able to utilize the smallest piece of data. For instance, even the hover that you made over a product is analyzed and evaluated to understand the likelihood of you buying that product.
In practice, this personalization helps deliver images of related products, enticing offers related to the product, alerts related to that product, and dynamic content that alters according to demand and supply.
AI engines such as Boomtrain acts as a bolt-on with your existing customer channels and helps businesses analyze how customers are interacting online. It also provides a unified view across all devices, monitoring and analyzing performances across different platforms.
Companies like Criteo, are assisting Internet retailers to serve personalized online display advertisements to consumers who have previously visited the advertiser’s website. Through cross-device advertising, they are able to engage shoppers wherever they are online with premium-placed ads across desktop, mobile and social.

AI is assisting in generating deep and relevant insights of data by analyzing and scanning through terabytes of data to efficiently predict human behavior. This scale of intelligence helps deliver a personalized shopping experience for the end user.

3. Curbing Fake Reviews

These stats are absolutely insane!
Customer reviews are an integral part of the sales cycle. 87% of customers trust what they read without the blink of an eyelid. The last couple of years have seen a surge in talks around this subject and has consequently impacted the way customer perceive information they encounter online, even if it is ostensibly written by a credible source.
Artificial Intelligence is increasingly being deployed to analyze user reviews.
For instance, Yelp has deployed a sentiment analysis technique to classify their review ratings. Through this technique, they organize the information into different data sets like business_id (ID of the business being reviewed), date (Day the review was posted), review_id (ID for the published review), stars (1–5 rating for the business), text (Review text), etc,.
On similar lines, Facebook has come up with their AI solution “fastText” for text classification and create supervised as well as unsupervised learning algorithms to obtain vector representation for words.

4.  Sales Forecasting

Earlier only God or Charles Xavier could have read your mind – but now – AI can too!
Try and fathom an alternate reality where all your marketing efforts and expenditures are targeted only where the customer is likely to make a purchase. Your conversion rate will be at an all-time high, and you won’t waste your capital on customers who won’t buy.
Being able to foretell how much of a given product will sell by a specific date will enable shop owners to stack up on inventory more efficiently, and simultaneously eliminate large sums of undesired cost.
It is especially valuable for industries dealing with perishable products, which include not only groceries but also tickets of concert and transportation – anything that costs money when unsold.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

AI solutions can gather historical data about past purchases and help your sales team better derive conclusions and make decisions. Besides, you won’t even need to sell your arms and legs to afford this either as these solutions are easily deployable, even by organizations with smaller budgets. Employing AI, businesses were able to derive relevant conclusions like –

• Suggesting products that should be promoted on a particular date
• Identify popular products that are making good sales
• Predicting what customers are likely to purchase in advance
• Determining the highest price a customer will pay for your product
• Targeted promotions
• Reduce fraud
• Improve supply chain management
• Enhance business intelligence
• Make the most money on your sales

5. Chatbots to the Rescue

It might be so hard for you to feel special amongst an ocean of 7 Billion, right?
Well, eCommerce websites are adopting chatbots to make you feel special.
Companies are increasingly deploying chatbots to improve customer service & satisfaction. Go ahead and browse any ecommerce site, a little chatbox will pop-up asking you what you want to make a purchase of. Once you enter your requirements, you get filtered results specific to your taste.
Let us list some benefits of deploying chatbots:

• Chatbots have increased customer conversion tremendously by reducing the labor for lazy buyers.
• We have come so far from the time when chatbots offered just customary replies. Now they have become intelligent beings who understand and tackle a range of issues which they were earlier incapable of.
• It is vital to provide real-time support to online shoppers as a recent study found that almost 83% of online shoppers need assistance while shopping and chatbots make it possible to provide real-time support.
• Chatbots also provide a more personalized experience for consumers. Compared with social media, chatbots can make conversations more interactive and engaging. They increase the sales figures by up to 40%.
• Deploying chatbots helps to collect feedback more efficiently. Additionally, it can make it easier to track purchasing patterns and consumer behavior.
• Chatbots can provide efficiency, that too at an affordable price. Live support can be quite costly with limited work hours. Chatbots automate the process and can operate 24/7.
• Chatbots are gaining ground. Apart from potentially changing the industry, implementing a chatbot can be a good marketing campaign. Any company who wants to stay ahead in the race needs to follow this trend.

Wrapping Up

Coming up with innovations isn’t rocket science anymore. AI has become the single biggest driver of massive technological advancements in every tangible domain – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The question we need to ask ourselves is – Are we ready to keep pace and adapt with this onslaught of changes that are happening so rapidly?
If No, there you have it. You need to adapt and change pace as quickly as possible. Coz if you don’t, you will be replaced.

EngineerBabu excels in providing some of the best eCommerce solutions out there. Our AI-enabled offerings help derive deeper insights into the customer journey and in turn assist businesses in taking calculated decisions on how to advance.

Our eCommerce customers have garnered numerous accolades over time. Our dear Australian customer Frankgreen grabbed the Best Design Award for not one, two, but three consecutive years. Ondoor, a grocery retailer earned 100,000 downloads in record time as well!

Call us for a free consultation, we’ll be glad to help you out! Also check out our portfolio, right here. 

Handpicked Content for You

• How to Start an eCommerce Business
• Largest eCommerce Companies in the World
• Top 7 eCommerce Trends for 2019
• 5 Ways to Ensure Impeccable Security for your eCommerce Business

The post Top 5 Use-Cases of AI in eCommerce appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

One can expect to see more, not less of AI in the coming year. More jobs would be created rather than snatched away by AI; at least this is what tech giants are believing.
Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos in a statement on the future of AI said, “I predict that, because of artificial intelligence and its ability to automate certain tasks that in the past were impossible to automate, not only will we have a much wealthier civilization, but the quality of work will go up very significantly and a higher fraction of people will have callings and careers relative to today.”

How will AI develop in 2019?

Tech biggies like Alibaba, Google, and Microsoft, have come up with ambitious plans to ‘democratize‘ AI.
Google seems to be spearheading this revolution through its offering, Tensorflow. Tensorflow is helping small businesses and developers innovate through its open-source machine learning framework.
Another AI project by Google, Jigsaw leverages artificial intelligence to detect toxic comments and hate speech which has proven to be quite successful. This tool assigns a toxicity score to a piece of text based on numerous parameters.
In a bid to expand their horizons, Google is targeting emerging economies like India to expand its offerings. Indian policymakers and government officials are being trained in AI tools to streamline governance. NITI Aayog, a policy think-tank of the government of India, is partnering with Google to work on an array of initiatives to help build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem across the country.
Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog, said in a statement: “NITI’s partnership with Google will unlock massive training initiatives, support start-ups and encourage AI research through PhD scholarships, all of which contribute to the larger idea of a technologically-empowered New India,”
Through their collaboration, the organizations are planning to conduct hands-on training programmes to sensitize and educate lawmakers and technical experts in government about relevant AI tools and how they can be used to streamline governance.

On the same lines, Chinese tech behemoth Alibaba aims to bring sweeping and disruptive changes to China’s vibrant business landscape.
The machine intelligence technology division leads Alibaba’s efforts into AI. The division is working in areas including computer vision, speech recognition, optimization, and natural language processing.
One of the projects underway comes in the form of AliMe, an AI-enabled chatbot Alibaba developed that recognizes what people say both in terms of the text and the speech.
Not limiting the use cases of AI to just e-commerce and retail, Alibaba has ventured AI in farming and agriculture. On this front, the company is coming up with initiatives that can carry out a variety of things including, tracking animal IDs, detecting nutrition management, etc.
“Alibaba has changed the everyday life of the Chinese in China. Looking forward, our visionary leader, Jack Ma, wants us to be able to reach two billion consumers and to help 10 million businesses around the world. That’s a huge call, but we already have half of the platforms in place.” said Alibaba’s chief scientist Xiaofeng Ren, in a statement to CeBIT.
Meanwhile, Microsoft too is getting on the AI bandwagon. It’s CEO Satya Nadella in a bid to demonstrate that Microsoft can develop state-of-art services and still be a trusted provider for preserving user’s data has come up with a plan to expand the offerings of its digital assistant Cortana. Microsoft is targeting the office space to introduce a workplace-specific service to integrate AI into more of its enterprise services.

What will become increasingly important?

At the helm of all these AI developments that planned is, ‘Data.’ According to an industry insider, the benefits of AI can only be reaped if the data being used is fit for purpose.
Major AI companies are leading in this domain solely because of the fact that they have a lot of data for the algorithm to be trained on. For these techniques, to prove fruitful, it is extremely critical to have smart and relevant data. The performance of algorithms is more dependent on quantity rather than the quality of the data. Unless you can feed all the knowledge manually, it is vital to have an abundance of data for the algorithm to be trained on.
Artificial Intelligence rests upon the idea of mimicking how humans learn. All of our life experiences act as a set of data for us to learn. Thus a successful AI needs to mirror human behaviour to get successful.
Let us change the frame of reference and drill down to some of the significant developments that AI is definitely going to witness in 2019.

1. More jobs will be created by AI than lost to it

A utopian workless future will still be a distant fantasy in the coming year. It is still far from reality that the rise of machines will take over our jobs and cause a social strife all over the world.According to a Gartner report, as many as 1.8 million jobs would be lost to automation, especially in manufacturing, but also, 2.3 million would be up for grabs!
Let us consider a scenario to understand the situation better – Consider a garment factory, imagine a machine operator in a factory. Although a portion of his/her job could get automated, they will definitely have other roles, for instance, managing inventory and overseeing junior workers, which computers cannot supervise. Also consider the difference between a worker in a US garment factory and its counterpart in Vietnam: the American unit is more likely to be technologically forward, and a typical worker’s day will likely include a higher number of non-routine tasks that can’t be automated.
Undoubtedly, it is fairly accurate to say that non-manual jobs will be lost to AI, but more and more will be created as well! Repetitive tasks wouldn’t need to be performed by humans, and we will get more time to utilize our creative thinking and exemplary abilities to perform tangible tasks.
Industries such as education, IT services, public sector, especially healthcare will see a drastic infusion of new job opportunities pertaining to AI.
Although when it comes to doctors and lawyer, AI service providers have made a concerted effort to present their technology as something which can work alongside human professionals, assisting them with repetitive tasks while leaving the “final call” to them.

2. AI assistants will become a fixture in enterprises

AI is so intertwined in our everyday lives that we don’t even realize it, from a simple Google search to shopping at Amazon, or watching Netflix – AI is at work to provide us with the best-personalized experience.
With significant product releases from the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, and several other vendors – It is evident that people are embracing the comfortable and conversational modes of interaction.
2018 was the year of consumer voice assistant, 2019 will be the year where enterprises will see an influx of voice assistants in their day-to-day operations. Already, enterprises have begun realizing the importance of conversational technologies and are leveraging them as an extension of their businesses to support a wide range of tasks.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Machine Learning AI assistants will become increasingly efficient, thanks to their exposure to more and more information about how we communicate. By the end of 2019, these assistants will become so sophisticated that they would be able to anticipate our behavior, read our facial expressions, and even understand our habits.

3. AI will venture beyond tech companies

Many AI luminaries believe that AI has a much broader scope outside the tech domain. Citing use cases from a recent McKinsey report which found that AI will generate revenue of more than $ 10 trillion in GDP by 2030.
According to Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, “I think a lot of the stories to be told next year (2019) would be in AI applications outside of the software industry. As an industry, we’ve done a quite decent job of helping companies like Google and Baidu, but also Facebook and Microsoft — which I have nothing to do with — but even companies like Square and Airbnb, Pinterest, are starting to use some AI capabilities. I think the next massive wave of value creation will be when you can get a manufacturing company or agriculture devices company or a health care company to develop dozens of AI solutions to help their businesses.”
Many companies are recognizing the importance of catching up to AI technology, lest they be left behind. Here are 11 industries that are experiencing disruption.
     • Agriculture
     • Retail
     • Manufacturing
     • Law
     • Automotive
Although the domain that would reap the maximum benefits will definitely be healthcare. The following could be significant developments in healthcare:
     • Managing Medical Records and Other Data
     • Doing Repetitive Jobs
     • Virtual Nurses
     • Precision Medicine
     • Health Monitoring
     • Healthcare System Analysis
     • Drug Creation

4. SMEs will see a significant transformation in 2019

The small and medium-sized businesses are bound to see a major overhaul in 2019. This is precisely due to the recent commitments by tech giants – Organizations like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. are offering open-source frameworks that could easily be integrated with the current business processes.
In 2019, SMEs would no longer need to break the bank to incorporate AI into their operations. By leveraging existing platforms like Tensorflow (By Google), Keras, SparkMLlib, Caffe, etc., SMEs could save considerable cost and time which would have otherwise been required in developing and designing the products in-house.
Apart from this 2019 would also witness an influx of new AI-powered analytics tools. These tools are beneficial for businesses who don’t want to invest heavily in Artificial Intelligence and are still looking to reap the benefits of it. Analytics tools offer a gateway for small businesses to leverage the potential of AI even if they do not possess a vast amount of data.

Must Read: How Can AI Benefit Small Businesses

5. AI skills will become increasingly in demand

Organizations have been facing an impertinent issue of lack of technical skills required for developing to-the-mark AI products.

AI-related skills, as well as in related areas such as machine learning are in short supply today. Due to the relative newness of this technology, most educational institutions haven’t yet introduced a dedicated curriculum in their syllabus for AI and deep learning. This has created a crevice of sorts in the demand and supply of skilled AI professionals who are good with these skills.

As the democratization of AI is on the lines – It has to become viable for both, the tech giants and small and medium-sized businesses to recruit AI professionals easily.
Moreover, AI professionals require extensive on-the-job training, and as of now, there aren’t enough experienced AI professionals to take over leadership roles required by organizations who are just beginning to introduce AI in their services.
2019 would see tech giants such as Amazon and Google invest globally in expanding their talent pool. The Google Brain facility in Toronto is exclusively dedicated to research in AI; also Amazon has established an AI-focused lab in England and plans to build a similar facility in Spain.

Wrapping Up

The application and use case of Artificial Intelligence is beginning to encompass more and more businesses and is becoming a critical aspect of our everyday lives. As this article suggests, the use of machine learning is not just limited to the more conventional industries. Its use goes far beyond what one can imagine – Even bloggers nowadays are utilizing machine learning algorithms to engage users and improve their conversion rates.
Many companies already see the competitive edge AI-powered solutions can give and we can easily anticipate now more than ever the unusual uses of artificial intelligence in the future.
But the elephant in the room certainly needs to be addressed – The advancement and the evolution of AI comes with abundant risks. Due to its relative infancy, no proper regulations have been put in place to ensure that this gold mine doesn’t get exploited by notorious elements.

We urgently need to account for ethics and issues of bias during the development of these AI-based products, whereas today organizations easily overlook these things.

Considering how gruesome it is in finding the perfect tech partners for developing an efficient AI product. EngineerBabu houses a talented bunch of AI professionals who have proven their mettle by creating hundreds of successful AI products based on Machine Learning and Deep Learning technologies.

Contact Us for a free consultation call, we would love to guide you. In the meanwhile, check out some of our amazing AI products, right here.

Handpicked Content for You:

• How AI can help small businesses.
• What are UI and UX? A Designer’s Guide to the Tech Industry
• How Can Blockchain Remodel Supply Chain? A Comprehensive Analysis.
• Digital Transformation in Finance

The post Artificial Intelligence in 2020 | AI Development appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

Hey Siri! Can you help my business?

Quite recently I got into a discussion with my marketing manager, a tall and burly mid-age man;
Let’s call him Steve. 
Steve and I got into a discussion on the subject of how AI in general, is transforming the way business is conducted.
This man, a well-educated gentleman, only partially agreed with my perspective,
He added,
“I acknowledge technology has made quite an impact, but this impact is austerely restricted. My domain of work, or for that matter most small businesses haven’t observed any major transformation even after the recent developments in AI,”He continued,
“It is predominantly large organizations that have profited from new-age technologies like AI and Machine learning.”
This got me wondering…

• Is the AI use-case still confined to big & fancy corporations?  
• Has it not facilitated small and medium-sized enterprises at all?

My inquisitiveness made me go scouting around, inquiring small and medium-sized business owners, asking them this question.
Surprisingly, almost everyone had the same outlook! After a lot of scavenging, this is what I learned.

How Can Small Businesses Leverage AI Now?

AI and ML applications are almost everywhere, from ride-hailing services to voice search on smartphones, we use AI services every single day – It feels so accessible to us consumers that it must be within reach of small business too!
It is expected that AI will be a game-changer for all industries by providing smart applications and efficiency in the business processes through optimal utilization of organizations data.
Huge corporations have inculcated AI into their systems and are quite satisfied with the improvements, but SMEs are still not sure about potential use cases of AI for them, because they question if it can really bring a change in their business processes.

Artificial Intelligence isn’t just for companies with billion-dollar budgets.

In fact, small business communities are competing and how! Many innovative SMEs are significantly cutting costs and delivering excellent customer experiences with AI-powered applications.

If applied optimally, AI tools can transform the MSME space enabling small business owners, and entrepreneurs create hugely successful operations across a spectrum of business functions including, product development, sales, customer service, and marketing.
Based on my extensive research, it became rather evident that most SMEs are struggling because of their belief that AI requires considerable investment.
Fortunately, for businesses on a budget, one doesn’t need to break the bank to start incorporating machine learning and AI into their operations. By launching on a smaller scale and leveraging ready-made solutions, one can efficiently harness the capabilities of AI and improve performance across different departments considerably.

Here are 4 best approaches to employ AI in SMEs right away:

1. Leveraging existing platforms

Developing your own AI is undoubtedly a complex and time-consuming process and requires a considerable amount of investment. Fortunately, several tech companies have open-sourced their AI efforts in a bid to make AI reach more and more consumers. Leveraging this platform for your business saves you considerable cost and time, required in developing and designing. Here’s a compiled list of some of the most popular AI platforms that your business could leverage:

• Tensorflow (by Google)

Released in 2015, TensorFlow is one of the most well-maintained and extensively used frameworks for machine learning.
Developed to fuel its research and production objectives, TF is now widely used by numerous companies, including Dropbox, eBay, Uber, Twitter, and Intel.
Tensorflow’s extensive use case is attributed to its availability in almost all the major programming languages, like C++, Go, Haskell, Java, Python, Rust and most recently, Javascript. One can also find third-party packages for other programming languages.

• Keras

Keras is notorious for its user-friendliness, modularity, and ease of extensibility. The standout feature that makes Keras unique is that it could be applied as a bolt-on and stand-alone software as well. Keras was designed to simplify the creation of deep learning models.
Being written in Python, it can be deployed on top of other AI technologies such as Tensorflow, CNTK, and Theano.
The platform provides a comprehensive machine learning library that allows for,

• Easy and fast prototyping,
• Runs optimally on CPUs and GPUs
• Supports both recurrent and convolutional networks.

• Spark MLlibDeveloped by Apache, Spark MLlib is a machine-learning library that supports Java, Python, Scala and even R. Spark MLlib is specially designed for processing large amounts of data and could quickly be deployed across various SMEs like manufacturing, finance, healthcare and many more. The tool also provides interoperability with NumPy in Python and R libraries.

• Caffe

Released in 2017, Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding often abbreviated as Caffe, is a machine learning framework that primarily focuses on expressiveness, speed, and modularity. This open source platform is written in C++, and also comes embedded with a Python interface.
Features:

• • Expressive Architecture
  • Extensive Code
  • Fast Performance
  • Active and Vibrant Community
    Caffe could serve as an ideal platform for your business as it is easily deployable and its active community provides on-the-go solutions.

• fastText (by Facebook)Created by Facebook’s AI Research (FAIR) lab provide word embeddings and text classifications. It is available across all major platforms like Linux, MacOS and even Microsoft Windows.
Written in C++ and Python, fastText allows users to create unsupervised or supervised learning algorithms for obtaining vector representations for words.

2. Start Small

AI enablement can’t be achieved overnight. Trying and rushing into the process is definitely a detrimental approach. Going all-in and investing massively is not recommended for small and medium scale businesses. SMEs need to start slow and increase their AI efforts gradually over time.
Below is a structured approach as to how to proceed:

• Start by integrating first-party apps that facilitates productivity of the already employed workforce.
• Once ready, steer your efforts towards open-sourced AI, cloud systems and flexible workflow models.
• Start with a small problem with a high chance of demonstrating a positive return on investment (ROI).
• There are three steps
  • Define: Define crystal clear expectations of what AI can and cannot do for your specific business profile.
  • Measure: Measuring should be done against meaningful baselines.
  • Decide: Decide whether the experiment worked or not, and fail fast.

Thus, it is critical to tackling a small problem which has a high return on investment, especially if you are a small business. Adhering to this approach proves fruitful when you are struggling with the amount of money you are willing to invest in AI.

If you are on the lookout for creating an AI product and are looking for a free consultation, click here. 

3. Implement AI for analysis

The most crucial and essential use case of AI for small or even humongous business is in analytics. AI has opened new horizons in the domain of analytics; by leveraging predictive analysis, one can scale up their enterprise in a tremendous way.
If you are trying to implement AI for your business without wanting to invest heavily in machine learning, then analytics is the way to go.
AI-powered analytics software will get you business intelligence at a throwaway price.
Here is a compiled list of some of the best analytics softwares that your business can leverage:

• Amazon Machine Learning

AML is a machine learning service that provides tools and wizards for creating machine learning models. With the help of easy-to-use analytics, Amazon aims to make machine learning more accessible than ever.
AML can be connected to the data stored in RDS, Redshift or Amazon S3.

• H20

H20 has carved out a niche for itself AI and machine learning arena because its primary tools are free and open source.
You can get the main H20 platform simply by downloading them.
H20 operates under the Apache 2.0 license, one of the most flexible open source licenses available. Besides, you can also run them on clusters powered by AWS for just a few hundred bucks.

• Microsoft Onboard

In the verbatim of its CEO, Satya Nadella, “Our goal is to democratize AI to empower every person and every organization to achieve more.”
Keeping that in mind, Microsoft has developed an open-source software framework that competes with the likes of Caffe and Tensorflow. The solution enables enterprises to scale efficiently across multiple machines on large datasets.

4. Deploy Chatbots

Chatbots are an excellent place to receive an instant return on your investments from AI. Their capability to interact and engage with customers, answer basic & even complex questions, and route inquiries aptly allow businesses with limited staff to appear much more prominent.
AI can leverage its lightning-fast data processing capabilities to analyze all available information of any customer and automate responses based on that, thus reducing the burden on the staff in charge.
It also improves customer service and retention – providing 24/7 call center services, which otherwise requires a considerable investment.

Benefits of AI in Small Businesses

AI can drive significant breakthroughs for SMEs across many departments. Though AI is still evolving, we are starting to believe that it will change the way businesses are managed through the level of technology it provides. Many organizations have begun implementing AI into their business workflow and are seeing a considerable improvement in ROI and business turnover.
AI can be useful for small companies as well, by making correct use of the data they generate. Business owners should start thinking about the steps which can allow them to implement AI no matter the size of their business successfully.

Below are some of the points which can help small business owners to adopt AI:

1. Highly efficient customer service

Customer nurturing is an essential process for any business. Support is vital to retain a customer, and sometimes support agents fail to deliver unique and appropriate solutions to their customers. Through AI enabled support services, this anomaly could be readily addressed. Besides, the risk of human error is wholly eradicated.

2. Important insights into the competitor’s business process

Studying the competition thoroughly is crucial for understanding market trends and staying competitive. AI-based analytics softwares provides much more significant and relevant insights into the business process of your competitors.
For instance, AI-powered competitive analysis tool, Crayon can help track your competitor’s activities across different channels like websites, social media, and web applications. This functionality enables small businesses to get a better understanding of ongoing changes in the competitor’s strategy.

3. Off the rack solutions

Small enterprises can deploy off the shelf tools into literally every element of their business workflow involving data. These solutions provide not only better insights into the process, but also suggest better solutions for the problem. For instance, AI enabled tools like Monkey Learn uses technologies like entity extraction and sentiment analysis to derive a better understanding of the business. Also, it doesn’t require the user to code and is extremely easy to integrate. Another interesting tool is the Enterprise Immune System by Darktrace. This AI leveraging security application company builds their own understanding of what normal human behavior looks like within an enterprise and detects emerging threats in real time.
This tool requires no special skills to install and is also self-learning.

4. Transform your marketing process

AI is fundamentally changing marketing from the roots. AI-based advertising platforms have already been deployed by huge companies like Facebook and Google to target specific customer-set who are receptive to their message. This is just as true for small businesses; by deploying programmatic advertising, SMEs can easily reach a considerably large audience online, which was not possible earlier. It is strongly recommended for small businesses to start leveraging and integrating AI now if they want to reach potential consumers in the future.

5. Cost and Time benefits

The utilization of deep learning by SMEs can end up saving a lot of money spent on employing extra employees or outsourcing for specified projects. When repetitive or time-consuming work is done quickly and efficiently at the push of a button then employees are freed up to do creative work that will help the company grow.

Wrapping Up

“Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we’ll augment our intelligence.”

—Ginni Rometty, CEO IBM

AI and Machine Learning use-case is not just restricted to large enterprises now. They are an excellent way to achieve tremendous growth for SMEs as well. They allow small businesses to effectively delegate conventional tasks to be done by innovative yet fast approach, making employees free to focus on other resourceful and creative opportunities that can help companies expand.
However, to achieve success with AI, small businesses need to strategize and align these applications with their respective business goals. The AI journey can be prolific for SMEs if they properly understand the significance of this emerging phenomenon and accordingly prioritize it to achieve long-term and scalable success.
To a relatively greater extent, the scenario concerning AI and businesses is very similar. Just like the 80s, when there were exceptions and some businesses considered investment in computers for the future of their industry, SMEs who visualize value through such investment and are at the same time are able to afford it, should move ahead and evaluate their investment decision based on their business objective.
With an extensive portfolio of developing hundreds of successful AI-based platforms for our cherished customers. We truly imbibe all the skills and expertise that is required for designing a great product.
Check out our portfolio 
And feel free to reach out to us for any consultation whatsoever, we will be extremely delighted to assist you. 

Handpicked Content for You:

• How to Build an Awesome eCommerce App?
• How to Start a FinTech Company
• Fintech in 2019. Trends to watch out for!

The post How Can AI Help Small Business? appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

The world today;
Is experiencing a dramatic change in age demographics. Considering America as a prime example, it is estimated – In the year 2019, the group of people of age older than 65 will outnumber the group of those younger than five.As life expectancy increases, the number of people living with different chronic conditions and functional impairments, for instance, dementia, diabetes and the inability to manage household chores with growing age are further increasing.
People belonging to the “old age” group are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases and require more care and attention. In such times, the need of the hour is to discover and develop solutions that ensure people’s healthcare expectations, preferences as well as their needs. This leads us to envision the potential of ‘healthcare at home services’ that can benefit people of all age groups to take care of their medical situations independently with ease.
With rapidly progressing technology, the potential for transforming healthcare at home will also grow tremendously. Healthcare organizations and institutions will be able to provide exceptional levels of patient care along with the comfort of home. This will promote greater patient satisfaction and improvement of cost control in healthcare services. As per M&M, home healthcare is expected to reach $349.8 Billion from $227.5 Billion by 2020 globally, at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period.

Elderly and ailing patients might not have the resources and energy to visit doctors every now and then, which consequently leads them to choose the option of healthcare at home. Due to this, healthcare companies are always competing with each other in the race to adapt to the increasingly digitized world.
Specifically talking about the US, the healthcare organizations are well aware of the issues prevailing such as the need for increased care for home treatments of the aging population, mostly due to mobility and budget issues. The only savior that can aid in such a situation is technology, given that it is implemented correctly.
While working with technology, it is vital for home healthcare organizations to choose the right option to achieve the desired results, such as increasing efficiency while providing patients with the utmost care and affordable solutions.

What Constitutes the Spectrum of Home Healthcare?

Other than providing healthcare services for the elderly, healthcare at home is also useful for patients who need constant medical care and treatment once they get back to their homes from the medical facility or hospital. Home healthcare makes it possible for people to receive a variety of medical services in their homes. Healthcare at home can be beneficial for people dealing with different conditions. Whether the patient is an individual recovering from an illness after a hospital stay or someone who is disabled, old or suffering from a chronic disease, healthcare at home can be the right option in such situations.
Healthcare at home allows people to get any kind of treatment available; be it therapeutic or nursing or even routine medical assistance. According to a survey by Canadian Home Care Association, with the aid of healthcare services at home, there has been a decline of around 72% in emergency department visits, this has also resulted in the reduction of hospital admission rates.

Healthcare at home comprises of the following factors:
• Home Assistance
The primary focus of healthcare at home is for people to get medical support at home rather than spending time in a medical facility. Healthcare at home allows people to get the freedom of staying at their residential facility rather than opting for long-term nursing care at hospitals. With home assistance, medical professionals can assist patients who are incapable of conducting daily activities with help for tasks like food preparation, basic housekeeping, and emergency measures. This can be done until the patient can do all such tasks by themselves.
Home assistance also allows medical professionals to take care of medical and psychological assessments while allowing individuals to learn about pain management, disease education, and physical therapy, etc.
• Home Care Agencies
Home care agencies keep their focus on providing medical expertise in the form of healthcare professionals at a patient’s home. In such cases, medical professionals or doctors are sent to a patient’s house to treat their injuries or illnesses. Once the health condition of the patient is restored, the need for medical professionals end and their services are discontinued thereafter.
• Home Health Care Workers
Other than expert doctors, there are certain cases where other medical professionals are involved in home healthcare programs such as nurses, physiotherapist, nutritionist, occupational therapist, etc. The demand for such professionals is expected to significantly increase in the next decade as people of all age groups are growing more conscious of healthy lifestyles.

Benefits of Healthcare at Home

Healthcare at home can be beneficial for many reasons including but not limited to the following ones. Even when the patient is not in a condition to visit the hospital, home healthcare professionals can be of great help. They are specially trained and qualified to provide treatment while assessing the safety as well as risks at the patient’s home itself. They can also offer simple suggestions and corrections for the patient’s well-being, such as the medicines to keep in handy for emergencies or recommendations for immediate ambulance assistance etc.

1. Activities of daily living are supported in-home care too. These activities can include any basic necessity such as bathing, medicine reminders as well as grooming, etc. Such facilities allow elderly patients to get regular help along with their personal care requirements while maintaining a high quality of life for them.
2. Expert nursing care at home is one of the significant benefits of healthcare services at home. Skilled medical professionals can carry out specific critical medical procedures at home with the help of supervised nurses who are certified and hold knowledge about technically advanced medical equipment. Healthcare at home allows your loved ones to get the personalized care that they need at their doorstep.
   
3. Dietary and nutrition support is a part of home healthcare. Patients who suffer from certain diseases and are discharged from the hospitals after treatments, often grow very weak as they lack nutrition. Their problems can worsen with ageing, illness, and injury. Healthcare at home may include dietary and nutritional counselling along with home-cooked meals that can prevent your loved ones from lack of nutrition.
4. Multiple medical prescriptions can turn to be confusing. Home healthcare experts can help your loved ones to consume the right medicines at the right time to control their medical conditions and prevent the intake of wrong drugs.
5. When home care is provided to patients with chronic health issues such as diabetes or pneumonia, clinical trials have turned out to be better with fewer complications according to researchers. Healthcare at home can result in better health outcomes. Moreover, home healthcare allows patients to get treated in a better manner as it provides one-on-one support for individuals. Such personalized and skilled care strengthens the bond between healthcare professionals and their clients.

What’s Driving this Change in Home Healthcare Services?

Companies focusing on providing home healthcare services rely on automation heavily as it allows to ensure that the technology used in the process remains invisible and will enable them to deliver the best care for the users. Due to this factor, more and more home healthcare providing companies are discovering the potential value of automation and optimization as they need to stay competitive in the field.
Automated appointment scheduling is one of the examples of automated processes that result in increased efficiency. Leading technologies like Artificial Intelligence can help healthcare businesses in providing better organized patient-centric services.

For instance, medicines and equipment required by the patients can be determined in real-time with technology. Along with this AI can allow the feature of predictive caregiver scheduling and appointment duration along with predictive routing for travel in case of emergencies. It can also improve customer service through predictive cancellation to avoid no-show appointment prevention.
The whole purpose of automation in home healthcare is to streamline the overall processes such as scheduling and providing services as and when needed, along with all the necessary equipment, thus, improving the patient care at an accelerating pace. This way, all the hassle of fixing random appointments can be eliminated while increasing the productivity of the overall system.
Recommended Read: Blockchain in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Applications

The power of the latest ground-breaking technologies like Blockchain and AI can change a lot in the healthcare sector as by resolving current issues and helping patients to get the best experience when it comes to home healthcare. Healthcare organizations are getting aware of the benefits that technology can provide them such as finishing basic tasks and saving time.

5 Technologies Reforming Home-Healthcare

1. Sensors
According to Kalorama information, sales for remote patient monitoring was estimated to around $29.7 Billion in the year 2014 out of which a good part of the demand was accounted for home healthcare facilities and services. Eldercare providers have picked up interest in the home healthcare treatments rather than shifting people to another treatment facility.
As per the trend, sensor technology could be placed in home premises, around doors, windows as well as the patient’s appliances and equipment. These sensors can provide alerts to caregivers in case of any abnormal activity.
They can also track and send notifications if the patient misses their meals. This can be particularly important for patients dealing with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Such patients can remain at home, and their activities can be monitored via mobile healthcare apps as well as sensors.
2. GPSIn cases of emergency, such as when senior citizens are away from home for a long time, GPS tracking can help their families, healthcare workers or law enforcement bodies to locate them quickly. Technologies with features such as mobile alert services also allow these devices to follow a hybrid approach that enables people to find the elderly even in places where GPS might not be available such as garage parking and indoors. It can also help by automated calling for assistance in case users fall.
Moreover, in need for emergency health services, there can be a difference of life and death concerning calling the closest emergency squad and rapid dispatching. GPS tracking becomes and much-needed option in emergency business service.
3. Remote Monitoring Tools
Regular health monitoring is not an option but a necessity when it comes to elderly patients. Many devices are available these days which can be connected to smartphones to help reduce the costs as well as the time that is consumed when it comes to doctor visits in endangered health situations.

Technology has enabled different options in the form of fitness bands that can keep a regular track of sleep, diet, number of steps, etc. Along with these, there are many other devices which can be used for the purpose of tracking and measuring glucose and blood pressure levels along with heart rate monitoring and other measurements. Such tools allow the patient’s family members as well as nurses and doctors to keep a detailed track of their daily healthcare needs and eliminate the need of calling a doctor time and again.
4. Big DataHome healthcare relies highly on the data available from multiple resources and its analysis to gain vital insights for the right kind of treatment. Some home health services analyze data in massive amounts and use their outcomes to take preventive measures even before a medical situation can turn into a problem.
Big-data enabled sensor can detect the regular activity levels such as sleep patterns etc. and inform the caretaking authorities to take immediate action concerning any abnormality.
5. TelehealthTelehealth systems are a boon to the healthcare industry as they provide people with the ability to use phones and other digital systems to connect patients with doctors and specialists. Moreover, the promising advances in these systems can help the disabled or elderly citizens from traveling to-and-fro to healthcare facilities. Devices such as smartphones and iPads with a simple internet connection can make it easier for the people to implement telehealth and make results easier to understand. They allow doctors to monitor patients from different places and share the outcomes in real time.

3 Applications Driving Healthcare Innovation

Constantly evolving mobile technology has led us to implement new and improved ideas to reality. Healthcare mobile apps are a big revolution in the industry as they have made our work more accessible and improved the rate of efficiency.
Following is a list of some of the healthcare applications that are rapidly transforming the healthcare industry for good.
1. Doctor-On-Demand:
Doctor-on-demand is a mobile application that allows the patient to get a consultation with their doctors through video calling. The application uses the concept of telemedicine to provide the patients with an on-demand doctor in situations of urgent care.

Certified physicians offer their services for urgent care, chronic conditions, preventive medicines, medical advice, etc for both medical care and mental health.
The app could also be helpful in non-emergency situations like flu and cold, respiratory issues, allergies, back pain, and UTI.
2. HealthTap:

The application allows a patient to fix a virtual medical appointment with a doctor or to get some answers to their questions. It provides a convenient way to access healthcare from real doctors for 24*7, through consultations via video, voice or text. The app also has a knowledge library of around 700,000 topics and articles for people to read and learn about healthcare on their own.
It uses an AI-powered symptom checker for one-to-one recommendations and guidance.
3. Microsoft HealthVault:
Microsoft HealthVault is a digital service as well as a mobile app that offers a patient the freedom to keep their medical records updated and safe. The patients can also share these records with digital professionals securely in the time of need. The system is exceptionally suitable for patients with chronic diseases as they can keep a proper track of their routine health metrics.

It also allows patients to set healthcare goals, track progress, and discover health trends.

Concluding View

Healthcare at home sure has a lot of potential but it can only be leveraged if the technologies are utilized in an effective manner.

Crucial data such as patient history should be managed properly and researched for insights and understanding without compromising its security.

People need to believe in technologies in order to adapt and use them in daily lives. Trending names like Blockchain and Artificial intelligence can bring a revolution in the healthcare industry with emerging use-cases and a proper understanding on how they can be used at their best for patients, doctors as well as the overall healthcare ecosystem.

The post How is Technology Transforming Healthcare at Home appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

As Mr. White used to say – “I am the one who knocks”.
This new explosion in IT is definitely the one that is knocking on every VCs and investors doorstep. This could be precisely said because the overall investment in Financial Technology has already surpassed the 2017 results in mid-year itself.
Let’s take a look at some of the major breakthroughs that occurred in FinTech this year,
• The acquisition of WorldPay
WorldPay (now WorldPay, Inc) was publicly listed payment processing platform which provided online services for accepting electronic transactions by a variety of methods such as credit card, bank based or direct transfer. It also offered a range of merchant services and operated in an extensive demographic (400,000 merchants in 146 countries) across the globe. It was acquired by Vantiv, a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions for financial institutions. The $12.9 billion acquisition came as a significant step forward for the two giants.
WorldPay which competes with the likes of VeriFone, PayPal, Stripe and several others gained significant momentum after the acquisition.
• The Funding of Ant Financial
It didn’t come as a surprise to many when China’s Ant Financial raised about $14 billion in its last seed round. After all, it is backed by one of the biggest names in the industry (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.).

The funding made Ant the world’s leading FinTech firm. The funding undeniably equipped them with enormous resources for expansion. The affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is alreadyChina’s biggest online payments service and even controls the world’s largest money market fund.
“Now, with the help of our partners, we are going to accelerate our strategy,” Ant’s CEO Eric Jing said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Recommended Read: Top 10 FinTech Companies Transforming Finance in USA

Analyzing the above developments we could accurately predict where FinTech is headed in 2020.
Let’s take a sneak peek,

Fintech Trends in 2020

1. RegTech is here to stay

Compliance, Complexity, Cost and Bureaucratic processes have always stifled the development of the finance industry. The long and tedious processes have proven to be a bane for the industry. This led to the reincarnation of a morbid industry that never saw a significant thrust since the spurt of the dot-com bubble. Consequently, we are seeing a lot of financial firms shifting to Regulatory Technology (RegTech) to bridge those gaps.
One must wonder- What exactly is RegTech??

It is essentially the use of technology across financial services functions to ease financial tasks such as regulatory compliance. It has a significant impact on financial services.
In simpler words, it is a technology that helps financial service firms get better at dealing with regulation. For instance, Know Your Customer (KYC). But the benefits of RegTech far exceeds than just KYC.
As the world is moving from big data to ‘smart data’, technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are enabling companies to gain insights into regulatory practices, automate reporting, carry out a meaningful inspection of critical compliance risk areas and even potentially create an end-to-end view of compliance.
Companies are using RegTech to deal with the vast amount of data they are generating. More data handled the right way also means better information. Many VCs and investors have already started riding on the RegTech bandwagon, due to which there has been a significant increase in the investment across this lucrative sector.
There has been an investment of $1.37 billion in the first half of 2018 – more than for all of 2017. RegTech has a promising future ahead, and these new-age startups will be the ones to watch out for in the upcoming calendar.

1. Governance.io / governance.com:Based out of Luxembourg, and founded by brothers Bert and Rob Boerman, this RegTech startup provides smart technology and support services to facilitate the control of regulated companies. They raised their Series A round this year, Governance.io has established itself as a platform for good governance through the use of technology and support.
Deployed at-premise or in the cloud, the solution allows all stakeholders to collaborate on data, documentation, and workflows. It also provides a white-labeled client portal to exchange data and collaborate on meetings and due diligence questionnaires.
A network of governance supports clients that can provide hosting, operational support, regulatory advisory, and other support services.

2. Advanced logic analytics:
This UK based startup was founded in 2015. Riding on new age technologies, ALA has established a stronghold in the Compliance sector. It offers enterprise-wide big data and financial analytics solutions for buy and sell-side institutions and other financial firms. Their data science-led business offering and AI driven algorithms bring alternative data insights for financial institutions. By using machine learning-based analytic techniques, ALA develops and apply risk calculations. Communications and other source data are scored against a series of Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) to quickly pick up on any issues that could cause problems.

3. Agreement express:
Agreement Express provides onboarding automation software for financial services. Their platform allows wealth management and payments companies to deliver customer application, approval, and onboarding services across their offerings. They provide seamless integration to the back-office for compliance and risk workflows which is one of their most sought-after features.
4. Alyne:
The differentiating factor for this Munich based startup has been the market it caters. Alyne offerings include cybersecurity, risk management and compliance capabilities across all industries of all magnitudes. They call themselves “Business focused Software as a Service”.
5. Surety:
Surety caters to a niche segment of Regulatory Technology. They provide technology to protect the integrity of digital information using cryptographic time-stamping service. They are also one of the prominent providers of regulatory services such as IP protection and digital footprint preservation. Surety sanctions users to apply tamper-proof digital “Seals” to almost any form of electronic information. They are easily deployable across enterprise or cloud, providing long-term and independent proof with the guarantee that the information hasn’t been tampered since.
6. AppZen:
Appzen is an extremely impressive AI platform that utilizes machine learning to audit contracts, expense reports, and invoices. It integrates with all major ERPs, invoicing software, and expense automation products. This six-year-old startup is valued at $175 million and has recently raised $35 million in its Series B round. Appzen enjoys clientele such as Airbnb, Amazon, Citi Bank, Salesforce, Intuit, and 650 major organizations.
“The goal is to address all the domains in the CFO organization,” AppZen’s Chief Executive Officer, Anant Kale said in a statement.
7. AQMETRICS: 
AQMETRICS provides GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) software for financial services firms trading on the global financial markets. Headquartered in Kildare, Ireland (EU), AQMETRICS has raised almost $3.3 Million in investment so far. They specialize in providing unified market surveillance and compliance solutions to investment management companies. AQMETRICS serves a suite of cloud-based solutions and supports a full range of global regulatory reporting.

8. Arachnys:
Arachnys’ vision is focused on exploiting the evolving markets rather than already lucrative ones because they believe emerging markets, which are often fragmented and poorly organized will see an explosion of business information. Unlike their RegTech counterparts, Arachnys, therefore, targets the Eurasian market more extensively. Their primary emphasis remains attractive markets like China, India, Russia, and the Middle East.
Arachnys domain expertise caters to Customer Risk Evaluation lifecycle by using cutting-edge technologies such as Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing.
Their products are specifically tailored to serve a diverse customer base and are extensively customizable.

2. Artificial Intelligence:

In the early days of banking, bankers used to have personal connections with their customers. Each step of the banking process involved customer-client interaction. But due to the digitization of the banking process, this personal connection has been lost. So, is it possible to leverage the same technology to get that human interaction back?

Many believe, A.I can be leveraged to bring back that connection.
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) will continue to govern FinTech in new ways. In 2020, we could see companies use A.I. to develop new commerce interfaces, with the number of companies looking into voice set to increase.
Let’s delve into the potential use-cases of A.I:

• Credit Scores:
In traditional banking infrastructure, there were a lot of customers who were underserved and ignored. They couldn’t apply for a loan because they didn’t have a credit score. Many startups have stepped up to bridge that crevice.
Various applications are coming up to assist customers who want to apply for a loan but have no credit history for the bank to review. Many tools and technologies such as Psychometric Analysis, Behavioral Detection, Predictive Analysis, and mining of the borrower’s data through the web, social media, geo-location and even browser history are being deployed to ensure a detailed evaluation of the potential borrower. These technologies let banks build a vivid picture that allows them to evaluate whether a candidate is creditworthy.
• Security and Fraud Control:
The banking sector is the single most targeted area by hackers and fraudsters for obvious reasons. This anomaly allows for the development of some of the most innovative and hi-tech solutions in this realm. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Optimized Algorithms, and numerous other tools and technologies are being deployed by financial firms and new-age startups to address this issue. Many A.I tools have also come into use to analyze and observe user’s critical behavioral patterns and issue warnings in case of possible security infringement. Due to these developments, it was observed in the Q3 that consumers are increasingly becoming more at ease at using A.I-driven applications and digital payment gateways to carry out their financial transactions.
• Customer Support Automation:
Time and again it has been witnessed that most of the customer-facing processes are becoming obsolete by every passing day. They are being revolutionized by the advent of Chabots and Virtual Assistants. It could be easily figured out as to what exactly is driving that trend. Automation of customer-facing services address one problem that has always costed companies in billions of dollar – Human Error.

AI-driven platforms utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) are turning more human than ever. This combined with no possible error in delivery makes it an ideal fit. Chatbots can not only answer customer queries intelligently, but they can also be integrated with social networking sites, and accept requests for applications and orders directly from social media channels.

Gartner prediction for 2018, projected more than 2 billion people would be diligently using conversational A.I to interact with virtual assistants on different platforms. The outcomes clearly surpassed the forecasts.

Recommended Read: 7 Tips for Starting a Fintech Company

3. Blockchain will venture beyond Bitcoin:

The much-hyped technology upon which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based – The Blockchain, is all set out to venture beyond Bitcoin and will serve various other markets and domains. Keeping in mind the potential of Blockchain, several banks and financial firms have planned for considerable investments in the domain. Many companies have rolled out pilot programs across a range of industries, including – financial services, healthcare and even global logistics. Earlier in 2018, several banks in Asia conducted a pilot in which Blockchain was used to transfer funds across continents in a matter of few seconds.

The following could be the potential use cases that can come into light in 2020,
1. Weapons Tracking:Blockchain could help tremendously in gun control and weapon accountability. This could easily be one of the single most significant reform that could change the entire state of firearm distribution. And gun control being such a trending topic on almost every new network. Blockchain could create a completely transparent and never-changing registry ledger that allows law enforcement to track down weapons and guns ownership. It could also be utilized to keep a record of weapons sold privately.

2. Digital Voting:If you are worried about booth capturing or voter fraud. Then Blockchain will offer you a sigh of relief. Blockchain would offer the ability to vote digitally and at the same time be transparent enough that any regulator could see if any irregularity or fraud transpires. The decentralized nature and its immutability would ensure your vote truly counts.

3. Digital IDs:
Digital IDs with the help of Blockchain would be a boon for the impoverished and developing nations by giving them access to financial services. Tech giant Microsoft is already planning to venture into the domain by creating digital IDs within its Authenticator app.
4. Real Estate:
Since paper trails are frequently a source of confusion, it is entirely possible that Blockchain will take paper out of the equation. So, if one plans to buy or sell land, a house, or even a car you’ll just require to transfer the title. Thanks to Blockchain these titles will get stored on the network allowing for a crystal clear picture of the legal ownership.
5. Record keeping of medical records:
Patient privacy would be utterly discreet by the introduction of Blockchain in the pharmaceutical sector. The patients who possess the key to access these records will be in complete ownership of their data and will control who can access or view that data. Thus strengthening the HIPAA laws that are designed to protect their privacy.
6. Managing IoT (Internet of Things) networks:
Many networking corporations have announced that they are working on a Blockchain based application that will monitor the Internet of Things network. Such an application would help determine the authenticity of the devices on the network and would continuously do so for devices entering and leaving the network. This could drive a significant shift in device-to-device integration.
Recommended Read: How is BlockChain Revolutionizing Banking and Financial Markets

4. Financial Inclusion:

In the largest ever gathering of FinTech firms in Singapore, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi introduced attractive policies and plans to invite investors to the Indian landscape.
“I say this to all the FinTech companies and startups: India is your best destination,” said Modi, the keynote speaker at the Singapore FinTech Festival.
In Nigeria, FinTech startup NetPlus has come with a solution that provides simple and reliant digital payment system to the consumers. So, consumers of Nigeria who were generally skeptical when it comes to e-commerce, have embraced the platform.
Developments such as these are proving to be an excellent boost for evolving markets such as India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, and several others. Earlier when the FinTech hubs used to be just San Francisco, Singapore, and London, such developments are driving investors to these huge rewarding markets. This shift in the market will gain significant traction next year and developing nations would possible see tremendous growth in investments across FinTech and RegTech. Also, several financial establishments are planning to open up new premises in these countries which definitely suggests what is expected to come our way in 2020.

Wrapping up

My prediction for 2020:

It is big, It is growing, and It is disruptive.

FinTech would be the second-most significant transformation in Finance, since the first permanent banknotes. I believe, Financial Technology would not only disrupt the way we purchase and invest, but it would also alter the very definition of money itself.
FinTech 3.0 is upon us and banks, and financial firms will enjoy a roller-coaster ride riding on the FinTech wagon.  2020 will be the year of banks acquiring FinTech firms, or waiting for their slow demise. Those who catch the FinTech train would bolster, and the rest would be gasping for air.
After all, it is true what they say – You snooze, You lose.
EngineerBabuteam excels in creating fintech products utilizing the latest tech stacks. This is why so many of our clients have gone on to acquire record funding from renowned investors. One such dear customer of ours, BankOpen, a neobanking platform, recently raised $5M in Series A led by Beenext, Speedinvest, and 3one4 Capital. We possess solid domain expertise in developing FinTech products. Feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation.
What do you think of this article? Feel free to drop your comments in case you have any suggestions or queries. We’ll get back to you with 24 to 48 hours. 

Handpicked Content for You

• How to Start a Fintech Company
• How Can AI help Small Businesses
• Largest eCommerce Companies in the World
• AI in 2020 – What Tech Companies Are Betting Big On?

The post AI & Blockchain in Banking or FinTech appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.