Let’s know the importance, role, and applications of machine learning in business growth.
Machine Learning is one of the hottest technologies today, driving innovation for businesses of all sizes. In 2020, machine learning in business generated additional revenue of nearly $2.6 trillion in marketing & sales.
The advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) help businesses boost their efficiency, improve customer experience and relationships, generate more revenue, and automate mundane and routine tasks & processes.
While many organizations have already adopted this technology, plenty are still wondering what the applications of machine learning in business are. How can machine learning drive business growth? How to strategically apply machine learning for business innovation?
There are many more such questions running through the minds of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers.
In this article, we have answered most of these questions. Let’s begin with a brief introduction to machine learning.
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What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is a subset of AI that allows systems or machines to learn automatically from the data sets and experiences they can access. By analyzing the data sets and experiences, the technology then finds innovative and new outcomes.
ML doesn’t really need extreme programming or algorithms/rules to make decisions. What it does is learn the things themselves from large sets of data. The more data it has access to, the more it will learn and make decisions accordingly.
Businesses of all sizes across all industries realize the benefits of machine learning techniques. These techniques are commonly used in chatbots, spam filters, digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, driverless cars, spam filters, etc.
“The driverless car, for example, works on machine learning. A real driver drives, and there’s a program that observes what the human does, and then you improve all the time.”
–Tamim Saleh, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company
Machine learning tools and techniques are appropriate for categorizing a distinct type of data from large data sets. For instance, it can identify texts in images and videos and classify or divide similar data in the form of clusters.
This technology also has the potential to make predictions, generate missing data, create and optimize content, improve marketing automation, and do much more for businesses.
Recent research shows that 82% of marketers rely on machine learning and AI to make better personalization strategies. Furthermore, 64% of them trust these technologies to provide customers with well-curated and targeted content, offers, promos, etc.
One of the top benefits of machine learning for business growth is in terms of strengthening marketing and sales with clear insights into data.
Role & Importance of Machine Learning in Business 2025
Why is machine learning so crucial for businesses today?
The answer is that 82% of the businesses that adopted machine learning and AI witnessed a rapid rise in their return on investment (ROI), finds McKinsey.
Organizations in various industries, especially media & entertainment, telecom, and technology, invest heavily in machine learning and achieve a significant rise in their annual revenues.
The following are the critical roles of machine learning for businesses:
1. Faster & Better Decision Making
Businesses need accurate data and information to make informed and right decisions. Without machine learning tools and techniques, it will be almost impossible to analyze a large amount of data in real time and make required decisions at the right time.
ML is also capable of predicting the evolving market demands and business circumstances. This, as a result, will help businesses to beat the competition and maintain the pace.
2. Avoid Repetitive & Mundane Tasks
Among the top machine learning business benefits, the ability to execute automation and save time & resources has its value. Manpower can be used to perform small and repetitive tasks.
But what if there are millions of data points to be analyzed in a short time?
Even the dedicated teams will get frustrated and lose their temper. Moreover, it will consume a lot of time, money, and resources (if done manually). In case there is some human error, it may end up ruining the entire process.
That’s where machine learning plays a crucial and evident role. The technology will do its magic in a matter of minutes.
3. Eliminate Cyberthreats
According to Kaspersky, cyberattacks in India increased by 37% in the first quarter (1Q) of 2020. Another report shows that over 445 million cyber attacks were detected in 1Q20 alone.
Cybersecurity solutions powered by machine learning have the potential to reduce and eliminate several kinds of cyber threats. Such solutions are intelligent enough to detect ransomware, malware, phishing attacks, data breach, etc., and prevent the worst from happening.
4. Optimize Operational Costs
Enterprises need to hire additional staff for customer support, connectivity services, and telephones to cater to the customers. Often, there are many common queries of customers that an ML-powered chatbot can answer.
The intelligent chatbots can answer queries within seconds with accuracy. It can reduce operational costs significantly.
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Implementation of Machine Learning in Different Businesses
Here are the top five applications and use cases of machine learning in business to innovate products and services:
1. Enhanced Recommendations
E-commerce players like Amazon use ML-powered product-based recommendation systems. What these systems do is identify the hidden patterns and suggest the products visitors are looking for. This significantly increases sales.
Netflix uses recommendations, especially to enhance search results. The OTT giant says that visitors give up watching the desired web series or movie if they can’t find it within 90 seconds. With ML techniques, the company saves over $1 billion in lost revenue.
2. Social Media Content
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms use ML to analyze user-behaviour and serve the content they love. This keeps the users addicted to the platform and makes them spend more time there.
Furthermore, the captions can be translated into other languages, tag other people in the photos automatically, and generate subtitles for videos.
3. Customer Segmentation
One of the main challenges for marketers today is to predict the lifetime value of customers and segment them accordingly. Businesses have massive amounts of customer data that can be used to find meaningful insights with machine learning.
ML can be effectively used for the prediction of customer behaviours, and shopping patterns, rolling out personalized offers & promos, and segmenting them on the basis of browsing and shopping histories.
4. Self-Driving Vehicles
Companies like Tesla, Waymo, and General Motors are all set to launch their self-driving cars this year.
Powered by machine learning and deep learning technologies, these cars will make human-like decisions on roads.
5. Marketing & Sales
In 2020, Gartner predicted that 30% of businesses would be using ML in their sales process by the end of the year. This technology is proving to be transformative in marketing and sales.
Machine learning makes it easier to analyze website traffic patterns, create and optimize content, enhance marketing automation, and acquire more customers in less time.
6. Minimize Customer Churn
Many businesses are using machine learning to predict when their relationship with customers is getting sour. Then, they find ways to fix the issues and retain them.
Companies can utilize ML to understand the reasons behind customers abandoning them. They can then also analyze behaviors of existing customers and see alerts if any customer is at risk of losing. Required steps can be taken at the right time to retain them.
Role of Machine Learning in Various Industries
In 2021, these industries are relying on machine learning and artificial intelligence the most:
1. Healthcare
ML enables advanced analytics about the patients. Doctors can now predict if a patient is at risk for a stroke, kidney failure, and many deadly diseases on the basis of several factors available in the form of blood pressure readings, lab tests, gender, clinical trial data, family history, age, etc.
A quick and accurate analysis of this data can save thousands of lives.
2. Education
Machine learning in education is playing a vital role today.
Intelligent technology has opened ways to adaptive learning, rich curriculum and content, learning analytics, personalized learning, and insightful evaluation of assessments.
3. Manufacturing
In the manufacturing industry, machine learning is addressing many challenges, including the prediction of malfunctioning machines, the use of robotic assembly lines, the automation of manual tasks, etc. It also solves the challenges in supply chain management.
4. Finance
The financial industry is implementing ML to prevent fraudulent transactions and offer a secure transaction experience to customers. Finance advisors and banks also use this technology in predicting the rise & fall in the stock market.
5. Digital Marketing
ML has become a boon for digital marketers. It’s helping them in all aspects of marketing, whether it is online advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, or content creation.
Digital marketing tools powered by machine learning are simply making things easier for businesses to generate more potential leads and find new customers.
Along with these industries, retail & commerce, sports, and media & entertainment are also realizing the potential of machine learning technology.
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Wrapping up:
Undoubtedly, machine learning is here to stay for a long time. The stats and current applications prove that it can drive significant business growth and help businesses to stay competitive in the market. It’s all about understanding the challenges and determining the business goals.
Are you looking to use machine learning and AI for your business growth? Do let us know using the comments section below.