Cross-border selling offers numerous benefits to SMEs, including accessing new customers and revenue streams and driving product innovation. However, many SMEs find it daunting due to perceived barriers.

The first visible challenge is often 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.

Expanding to new markets is traditionally costly, and marketing and customer acquisition have become more expensive due to online competition. SMEs often lack the latest technology and financial resources.

Access to talent is another challenge. SMEs need various functions across their business to scale internationally, navigate compliance rules, and provide customer service.

Fortunately, there are 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 Digital Commerce Group (Alibaba International) recently pilot-launched “Aidge”, an AI-powered suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that is poised 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 utilizes 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 comprehensive content and design support, including multi-lingual content generation and image/video localization and live customer service support. 
A Large Language Model (LLM) is especially powerful when comprehending multi-modal signals, and it is capable of performing many analytical tasks instantly. When LLM is applied to content localisation - it is not only good at translation but also ensures that the content generated is authentic and tailored to different markets. This way, SMEs can produce content in their local language and automatically customize it for international markets, lowering operational costs.

Image Localization: Aidge expertly translates image text into multiple languages to cater to global consumer preferences.

Video Localization: Aidge effortlessly comprehends product key features through synchronized audio and subtitle translation.

Additionally, Aidge supports marketing through automated SEO optimization and creative generation. SMEs can combine audience analytics with content-generation tools to produce effective and creative marketing messages and ads. So, SMEs can engage in marketing efficiently and achieve increased conversion rates and reduced costs.

Selling Points Extraction: Aidge efficiently extracts selling points that align with product attributes, local market trends, and user preferences.

Aidge also provides multilingual customer service tools to ensure high satisfaction and time efficiency.

Enhancing Live Chat: Aidge facilitates global customer interaction and acknowledges feedback in diverse languages.

Tested within Alibaba International’s own ecosystem, Aidge was proven to significantly improve order conversion, consumer satisfaction, and time efficiency for SMEs. Starting from Nov 2023, Aidge has opened its platform to serve a broader base of SMEs through pilot testing with SaaS partners and independent software vendors (ISVs) to co-develop its use cases. Developers should not miss this opportunity to use AI to help businesses unlock global commerce opportunities.

Join Aidge’s pilot test at www.aidc-ai.com and give SMEs' e-commerce performance an edge.