Enterprise companies comprise a $3.4 trillion market worldwide of which an increasingly larger share is being allocated to artificial intelligence technologies.

By our definition, “enterprise” technology companies create tools for workplace roles and functions that a large number of businesses use. For example, Salesforce is the primary enterprise software used by sales professionals in a company. Also known as a type of customer relationship management software, or CRM, it is the system of record for sales professionals to enter in their contacts, progress of leads, and for sales metrics to be tracked. Any company directly selling their products and services would benefit from a CRM.

Plenty of enterprise companies use combinations of automated data science, machine learning, and modern deep learning approaches for tasks like data preparation, predictive analytics, and process automation. Many are well-established players with deep domain expertise and product functionality. Others are hot new startups applying artificial intelligence to new problems. We cover a mix of both.

To help you identify the best tools for your business, we’ve broken up our landscape of enterprise AI solutions into functional categories to match organizational workflows and use cases. Most of these enterprise companies can be classified in multiple categories, but we focused on the primary value add and differentiation for each company.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI)

This function derives intelligence from company data, encompasses the business applications, tools, and workflows that bring together information from all parts of the company to enable smart analysis. From streamlining data preparation like Paxata and Trifacta, to connecting data more effectively from different silos like Tamr and Alation, and even automating reports and generating narratives like Narrative Science and Yseop, enterprise companies are improving BI workflows with artificial intelligence.

PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity at work is often stunted by a myriad of tiny tasks that consume your attention, i.e. “death by a thousand cuts.” Many productivity tools have emerged to eliminate such tasks, such as the endless back and forth required to schedule meetings. Luckily, many of these productivity tools are virtual scheduling assistants like X.ai, FreeBusy, and Clara Labs.

CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT

Taking care of your customers is no easy task. Enterprise companies have recognized this critical area as ripe for disruption with artificial intelligence. DigitalGenius utilizes AI to sift through your customer service data and automate customer service operations. Inbenta’s AI-powered natural language search enables delivery of self-service support in forums and virtual agents. Luminoso creates visual representations of customer feedback, allowing companies to better understand what consumers want.

HR & TALENT

With the average tenure of a hire getting shorter, hiring and talent management is arguably one of the most difficult areas for every company to tackle. Where can you find the right candidates and how do you keep hires engaged? Companies like Entelo and Scout work from the top of the funnel to get you the most qualified candidates while others like hiQ Labs utilize public data to warn you of staff attrition risks and enable you to create retention strategies.

B2B SALES & MARKETING

No one likes to waste time tediously doing data entry or spend hours sometimes googling and sifting through LinkedIn trying to get that marginal bit of information on a lead. Perhaps that’s why professionals in these functions are willing to embrace and experiment with new tools. Some automate data entry and improve forecasting accuracy like Fusemachines and the AI-powered sales assistant Tact, while others like Lattice Engines and Mintigo utilize thousands of data sources to surface the most qualified prospects and opportunities. You also have Salesforce’s Einstein who has the intention of bringing AI and automation throughout the entire sales ecosystem.

CONSUMER MARKETING

So much data and intelligence can be gathered about your consumers through social channels, distribution channels, media channels, etc. Smart tools can not only crawl through this data, but analyze and understand what’s being said or done. Lexalytics is a text analytics platform that translates billions of unstructured data pieces and online signals into actionable insights for the company. Affinio uses deep learning to surface social fingerprints for the brand by creating interest-based clusters. Brands now have a better understanding of their customer segments, behaviors, and sentiments.

FINANCE & OPERATIONS

Finance & operations includes the back office, forecasting, accounting, and operational roles required to run a company. Since nobody likes paperwork, this area is ripe for automation. HyperScience recently came out of stealth with their $18 million Series A in December of 2016 to completely automate back office operations like form processing and data extraction through AI. Another company called AppZen is an automated audit platform that can instantly detect fraud and compliance issues, freeing up T&E teams from tedious manual audits and checks. The tools in this space reap immediate returns for companies due to the volume and repetitive nature of some of the tasks.

Read the source article at TopBots.