What is image recognition, and how can it benefit small businesses?
To help small businesses understand the uses and benefits of image recognition, we asked software experts and business tech professionals this question for their best advice. From building better content to competing more effectively in their market, there are several tips that your small business can follow to better utilize and benefit from image recognition.
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Here are 10 ways small businesses can use image recognition/computer vision:
- Increase Productivity
- Build Better Content
- Prepare for Future Processes
- Incorporate in Automation
- Assist in Security Threats
- Leverage in Hiring Processes
- Streamline Customer Processes
- Identify Variables in Images
- Compete More Effectively
- Proceed With Caution
Increase Productivity
At Comidor, we prioritize business process automation systems that utilize AI to perform complex tasks. One of our AI solutions is the cognitive automation capability that allows for optical character recognition (OCR), which can read and understand written text with our document analyzer model. Small businesses can take advantage of OCR by quickly scanning and organizing data in digital copies and saving specific data into text fields that can be quickly retrieved for complex workflows. The business benefits of using our software include increased productivity, higher accuracy, and improved customer service.
Spiros Skolarikis, Comidor
Build Better Content
Image recognition differentiates unique meanings within images. Implementing image recognition can be advantageous when marketing a digital brand. It involves recognizing objects in an image using machine learning algorithms and builds a database into an essential building block. This can be applied to customer-centric searches, marketing and analytics, and social media commerce, to name a few. With this change, marketers for small businesses can adjust their campaigns by monitoring users’ expressions and, in return, create better content.
Connor MacDonald, Ridge
Prepare for Future Processes
Image recognition is not only cutting-edge technology but also a great process automation technique, especially for small businesses. Image recognition helps to identify places, people, objects, and many more things in digital images. A digital image is made up of picture elements, often known as pixels, each of which has a numeric representation for its intensity or grey level that is finite and discrete. The computer then perceives an image as numerical values of these pixels. Currently, deep learning algorithms or neural networks are the best image recognition techniques in the market. This technology is of great help, mainly in reducing human error and optimizing the processes for small businesses that are in security, marketing, authentication, and other industries. Ongoing rapid developments in image recognition will help businesses to prepare for the future where they can successfully manage and reap the benefits of facial/object recognition.
Sri Sagar Kalisetty, Markitors
Incorporate in Automation
Image recognition is a technology that uses images or image data to identify objects within an image and can recognize, annotate, label, and organize image content. This technology can be used in small businesses to recognize images of products, content lists for eCommerce sites, and signs like menu items in restaurants. Small business owners can use image recognition software to automatically populate forms and documents with information about their store, products, and employees without manually typing the data in themselves.
Loren Quimbo, Glytterati
Assist in Security Threats
Image recognition software is getting better and better, and small businesses need to take advantage of it. Most of us have heard about the possibilities of AI, but we often find ourselves not quite sure how to find practical solutions that utilize machine learning. Of all the AI solutions on the table right now, image recognition software is some of the best. In our case, we’ve been able to create algorithms using machine learning that help us understand the cybersecurity threats facing our customers. A simple screenshot can tell us a lot about a customer’s situation, and if they need further assistance, image recognition software has made this process even easier. If a small business comes to us with a new security threat they’re facing, image recognition allows us to run diagnostics without having to compromise their system or server.
Bill Mann, Restore Privacy
Leverage in Hiring Processes
Image recognition identifies elements of an image. For example, a potential employee’s picture on LinkedIn can be reverse-image searched so that you can find it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media apps. This gives hiring managers insight into what a candidate is really like by seeing a larger picture of their life and interests. This technology can help hiring managers find candidates who are the right fit for their company.
Randi Shinder, SBLA
Streamline Customer Processes
Beyond its benefits for e-commerce, computer vision can help small businesses streamline the checkout process. For example, if you require proof of identification, you can use image recognition to collect and store data from the client’s driver’s license. Additionally, you can use computer vision to easily collect credit card information for quick checkouts.
Tom Mumford, Undergrads
Identify Variables in Images
Image recognition refers to technology that identifies variables in an image such as people, buildings, logos, places, and more. Image recognition can benefit small businesses because it can be used to identify and find images related to the business. The practical applications of image recognition are numerous. For example, a small graphic design firm can use this technology to search the web to see if any of their designs are being used without permission.
Vincent Bradley, Proper Wild
Compete More Effectively
As a content marketer, I look through the lens of marketing for the usefulness of any new technology. I think small businesses can benefit from image recognition by using it to replace the process of manually looking through bunches of images to find the best ideas, for logo recognition in images to measure the effectiveness of sponsorships, and to find images based on the interests of your marketing personas. Image recognition allows small businesses to do time and labor-intensive marketing tasks that previously may have been out of their reach due to limited resources. In turn, it allows them to compete for customers more efficiently and effectively.
Francesca Nicasio, Payment Depot
Proceed With Caution
Image recognition is a method of capturing, processing, examining, and categorizing images. Computers use computer vision technology powered by an artificial intelligence system to identify and detect images. Companies with the resources to pilot these systems are scrambling to become first movers in this sensitive data-driven industry. Here, companies and investors alike should consider waiting for the outcome and impact of legal and legislative bodies as they define the necessary performance standards and safeguards of image recognition.
Oliver Andrews, OA Design Services
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