One of the earliest uses of “artificial intelligence” was in medical diagnosis during the 1950’s where they took the decision paths of expert diagnosticians and coded them into software as essentially yes or no questions leading to a final assessment from those experts. We all do that today when we are using some of the software wizards to troubleshoot a problem, you answer a series of questions, which land you on a recommendation to fix your problem. Artificial intelligence is excellent at taking a large amount of data and finding trends or creating a quizzable database out of an instruction manual or finding examples of what you are asking for and manipulating it into the document you want, e.g. a vlog post or interview questions. It is revolutionizing business, but, for now, mostly in the back office, writing software code, synthesizing marketing strategies, polishing emails, creating spreadsheet formulas, etc. But it is not a magic wand and is still subject to what the industry
refers to as “hallucinations” where the software such as ChatGPT literally makes it up. In short, it writes a great first draft, but the human element is still needed, at least for now. In our software, Purchasing Ally, behind the scenes we are using AI to schedule checks on new vendor pricing (critical in these days of tariffs) to make sure you don’t quote a bad price, to look for the vendor’s responses to the purchase orders you sent, as well as learn what products you are searching for and do an autofill to make it easier. Our software is an easy way to create a sales order on the fly, with current pricing from your vendor, order the goods with the push of one button, and receive your vendor invoices with Purchasing Ally automatically pushing both the sales order and the vendor invoice into QuickBooks. Our website is www.purchasingally.com or email us at info@purchasingally.com for more information on how our family business can help yours.
Premier Flooring Retailer D2 | 2025 15 “ AI is powerful—but context, creativity, and judgment still belong to people.”
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