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The Era of "Man and Machine"



Some call it an upgrade while others call it a reinvention. Either way we have to face that the development of artificial intelligence or AI is very promising. AI enables companies to collect and process their outgoing and incoming eCommerce data in real time. This helps to increase sales and build relationships with end users, while people who work in the company can channel their time towards more intelligent work. There are a number of ways AI has already changed eCommerce over the years, and it has just marked the beginning of a long and fruitful journey between man and machine.

A research statistic conducted in 2019 plotted a marked growth in finance as well as for top start-up companies in the Southeast Asia region such as Lazada, shopee, tokopedia and blibli.com. These companies have come to thrive in recent years and are growing exponentially with the assistance of AI. Apart from Europe & USA, the major hub for global AI development is now Singapore that has made the greatest advances in analytics and machine learning technologies. However, there are other countries like Malaysia and Vietnam that are also generating positive outcomes with AI adoption and in the last three years, have built a healthy competitive ecosystem and shown productive gains.

AI applications have steadily interrupted and staggered the labor process in Southeast Asia. No more waiting in line on the phone to hear from a customer service person. Customized AI assistants or chatbots are programmed using natural language learning to respond to simple customer inquiries, voice commands for straightforward tasks and providing product recommendations through interactions with the customers. Chabot’s can also be integrated into your shopping carts. A study done by chatbots magazine revealed that every year, around 2 billion official messages are sent through messenger chat every year. Currently, 9% of retailers use this in Southeast Asia, but their plan is to bring this number up to 65% in their one year plan. 

New Age Devices propelled by AI

Voice enabled smart devices such as Alexa and Siri with its constantly improving AI capabilities can read us deals, order groceries or give us a quick update on the status of our product/business. This has been in use for a while. In 2016, 1-800-flowers.com introduced chatbots and now customers can send flowers to their loved ones via voice.

By providing recommendations, a customer gets access to all the products that they might be interested in buying. This allows them to make an informed discussion. 18% of retailers have resorted to using this AI, in Southeast Asia and their one year plan will get them to 43%. AI also plays a huge role in Amazon’s recommendation engine, which generates 35% of the company’s revenue, with its flywheel approach.

In visual searching, the scanning of a large environment to look for a particular object helps the customers identify exactly which product they are looking for. AI helps in obtaining visual cues. At the moment, Southeast Asian companies use 8% of visual search in their retail businesses but are preparing to bring that number up to 68% by the end of their 12 month plan. One such instance, a UK-based E-commerce retailer The North face used Watson , an IBM’s AI Solution to find the perfect jacket for their customers.

“Imagine when sellers can ship their goods within a day to customers on other islands. We can achieve that by making use of artificial intelligence technology, such as demand prediction, smart warehouses and smart logistics". With these words of William Tanuwijaya, CEO and founder of tokopedia, SELLinALL is proud to announce the integration of tokopedia, one of Asia's largest e-marketplace to its cloud based platform to help sellers tap diverse markets. tokopedia and the University of Indonesia (UI) launched an artificial intelligence (AI) center to help academics and researchers develop AI-based systems for payments, e-commerce analytics and information security.

By allowing its clients to increase business beyond borders, www.sellinall.com provides trouble-free access for companies or individuals to compare and assess their performances on all marketplaces in a single view. SELLinALL has recently added time zone based data viewing which makes it easier for our clients to know how much activity takes place in each time zone, and when. A comprehensive Finance dashboard to help sellers comprehend their financial metrics is also underway.

AI has slowly but surely started taking a stronghold on the way we work and function online, and most definitely has an enormous, beneficial impact on the eCommerce industry. AI would optimize network orchestra to an unimaginable level in the forthcoming days. Yes, you guessed it right. The next big step would be AI in Logistics! So, let’s prep up for this new era – The one that will integrate man and machine positively!


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