Cross-border selling offers numerous benefits to SMEs, including tapping into new customer bases and revenue streams and driving product innovation. However, many SMEs find this process daunting due to a series of perceived barriers.
‘Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in global commerce continue to face numerous challenges, such as language and cultural barriers, high marketing and user acquisition costs, and talent shortages,’ said Kaifu Zhang, Vice President of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (Alibaba International), who leads the company's AI initiatives. ‘Drawing on our years of experience in global commerce, our newly introduced AI suite “Aidge” is dedicated to simplifying global operations for SMEs. It addresses their needs in areas including content localisation, customer service, and marketing, with the goal of facilitating higher conversion rates and operational efficiency for businesses.’
The first visible challenge has to do with language and cultural barriers. While a business may have a popular product portfolio and strong market proposition domestically, it may not know if the product will be well-received in a new market. Every market is different and it can be difficult for SMEs to try and master every single one.
Moreover, expanding to new markets is traditionally costly, and marketing and customer acquisition have become more expensive due to online competition. SMEs often lack access to the latest technologies and financial resources needed to tackle this challenge.
Access to talent is another obstacle. SMEs require various functions across their business in order to scale internationally, navigate compliance rules, and extend customer service, which will allow SMEs to compete with businesses with access to more talent.
Fortunately, there are emerging tools that make global commerce more seamless, and artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the process.
Drawing on its more than 20 years of experience in global commerce, Alibaba International recently pilot-launched Aidge, an AI-powered suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that seeks to streamline global operations for SMEs. Aidge leverages Alibaba International’s expertise in global commerce, which operates in over 190 countries and serves more than 305 million users annually. It utilises proprietary large language models and computer vision models to enhance business performance and reduce costs.
Aidge addresses many challenges faced by SMEs in Europe and beyond by offering content and design support, including multi-lingual content generation, image/video localisation, and live customer service support.
A Large Language Model (LLM) is capable of comprehending multi-modal signals and can perform many analytical tasks instantly. When LLM is applied to content localisation – it can not only perform translations, but it can also ensure that the content generated is authentic and tailored to different markets. This way, SMEs can produce content in their local language and automatically customise it for international markets, lowering operational costs.
Image localisation – Aidge translates image text into multiple languages to cater to global consumer preferences
Video localisation – Aidge comprehends product key features through synchronised audio and subtitle translation
Selling points extraction – Aidge extracts selling points that align with product attributes, local market trends, and user preferences
Aidge also provides multilingual customer service tools to ensure consumer satisfaction and time efficiency.
Enhancing live chat – Aidge facilitates global customer interaction and acknowledges feedback in diverse languages
Tested within Alibaba International’s ecosystem, Aidge was proven to significantly improve order conversion, consumer satisfaction, and time efficiency for SMEs. Starting from November 2023, Aidge has opened its platform to serve a broader base of SMEs through pilot testing with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) partners and independent software vendors (ISVs) in a bid to co-develop its use cases. Those who want to use AI to help businesses unlock global commerce opportunities can join Aidge’s pilot test at www.aidc-ai.com.
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