Increasing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) keeps fueling the growth of machine learning (ML), which is one of its subsets. Unlike traditional algorithms, ML allows computers to perform new tasks through inference made after studying patterns. This makes data mining a key aspect of machine learning.

Applications and Benefits of Machine Learning

You might not realize it, but ML is already having an impact on your life. Search engines, eCommerce sites, and media streaming companies are using it in an effort to better understand your preferences. The most common applications include:

1. Predictive Maintenance

If you’re in a capital intensive industry such as manufacturing, even preventive maintenance costs you time and money. By analyzing factory data, machine learning can significantly reduce errors and unexpected failures.

An ideal ML architecture utilizes tools such as historical data, feedback loops, and workflow visualization to improve efficiency.

2. Customer Lifetime Value Modeling

If you’re an eCommerce company, you might experience problems with customer lifetime value prediction and segmentation. You might have a lot of consumer data, but you must deduce relevant insights for it to be useful.

ML mines your data for practical information such as trending searches, purchasing patterns and their online behavior.

3. Enhanced Cyber Security

Ever evolving cybersecurity threats require constant vigilance on your part. Bad actors are increasingly utilizing AI in their attacks. It only makes sense to neutralize and prevent them from using machine learning.

ML helps in addressing the severe shortage of cybersecurity experts by automating and constantly refining critical tasks. Other than preventing online attacks, it can also stop counterfeit or cloned products from being integrated into your supply chain.

4. Image Recognition

This benefit is applicable in a wide range of industries including eCommerce and healthcare. As ML gets better at identifying and correctly labeling images, both consumers and businesses stand to gain.

Consumers can glean more useful information from images, which increases their engagement with your brand. Businesses also increase efficiency through data mining, pattern recognition, and database analysis.

How to Prepare Your Business for Machine Learning

The following steps are essential to successfully implementing ML:

Analyze Your Business Processes. The aim is to use data to define issues that prevent the smooth running of your business. If the problem is bigger than you anticipated, it can be broken into smaller, more manageable segments. Defining the problem includes knowing its potential impact and the time needed to solve it.

Assess Whether Machine Learning Is the Ideal Solution. As great as ML is, it can’t solve every business problem that you face. Before making a decision, collect your data and sort it. You’ll have to hire a data scientist to help you do so in a thorough and objective way. ML works well in solving tasks that are human-intensive, repetitive and utilize large amounts of data.

Compare and Contrast Your Business and Technical Needs. While you might be clear about the business problems you want to solve, the technical implementation might not be as easy. Having an analytics officer helps bridge any differences between the two visions. You should also test various models so as to identify the best. Data analytics experts will help you verify your chosen model’s accuracy.

Be Prepared for Change. As with most AI-based solutions, machine learning will keep evolving at a relatively fast pace. To avoid your ML model getting outdated, keep updating it with the latest and most relevant data. Keeping up with business trends in your industry results in higher efficiency, which guarantees a higher ROI.

Are you ready to harness the power of machine learning? Whether you’re a scrappy startup or large corporation, Hummingbird Networks is your best bet for end-to-end IT solutions. Our experience, expertise, and passion for technology make us the natural choice for countless businesses. Contact us today for more information.