The Ultra ERP Blog keeps pace with the IT and enterprise software market activity – especially as it relates to ERP selection and enterprise software implementation.
This guest post takes a close look at the Bot Economy of conversational bots – or chatbots – in an enterprise environment.
As more millennials join the workforce and gain spending power, businesses must find new ways to connect with this digitally savvy generation, for whom rapid-fire instant messaging is as natural as breathing.
Be it for recruitment or responses to customer inquiries, a few adventurous companies are increasingly adopting digital communication tools to reach out to millennials on mobile and social media.
This means a fundamental shift in the way employers communicate with staff. While baby boomers and members of Generation X are comfortable with emails and phone calls, young employees prefer text-based chat apps for their immediacy and ease of use.
The Bot Economy: The Next Frontier
Ramco Systems recently launched conversational bots, or chatbots, a form of artificial intelligence which has chiefly been restricted to consumer-oriented voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. These in turn were thought to be the province of major tech companies with big R&D budgets.
Only a few of the 50,000 known bots in the market cater to enterprises, making us one of the early adopters in this space. Others include collaborative chat platform Slack, which has buddy-type bots which let users access over 100 programs that run on Slack, such as MailChimp e-newsletters and Salesforce records.
We believe enterprise chatbots present a great market opportunity: messaging is not new in the enterprise context, so a shift to chatbots seems like an obvious move. Thanks to open development platforms, these bots are now within everyone’s reach.
Versatile, industry-agnostic bots like those at Ramco possess advanced abilities to notify and predict. With built-in Natural Language Processing (NLP), they learn how humans talk and think, and curate contextual data from different sources.
Thanks to low-cost data storage and machine learning technology, bots can intuit user needs and offer solutions on feedback and new experiences. Be it a food order or cab booking, a bot with enough contextual data knows what a user needs before they do, and offers the solution in real time.
Considering the Bot Economy, note that bots, in short, kill two birds with one stone. The text or voice interface can be used by employees of all ages without extensive training, while the predictive algorithms automate repetitive processes to simplify the workflow and improve productivity.
This means that employees are freed from low-level administrative functions and can devote their time to more critical, strategic tasks.
Considering the Bot Economy, note that bots, in short, kill two birds with one stone. The text or voice interface can be used by employees of all ages without extensive training, while the predictive algorithms automate repetitive processes to simplify the workflow and improve productivity.
Bots @ Ramco
Most companies are still in the experimental stages of bot development, and perform tasks such as basic financial transactions and customer service. At Ramco, we have already deployed more than 20 bots for HR and aviation purposes. From payroll to supply chain management, we have found them to offer assistance to several useful functions across departments and processes in both sectors.
Take the aerospace industry: a plane technician who needs to repair equipment often has to walk back to a hangar and log into a system or scour piles of paperwork – just to check if a single part is in stock. With a chatbot and a smartphone, this process becomes much easier. The technician can talk to the chatbot in the field, using simple voice commands to locate the missing part within seconds. The chatbot can propose tools or summon videos of methods that others have used to solve a problem, and even place orders for components that need replacement – all in natural language. This saves time, effort and money all around.
The Secret of Making Bots
We keep a two-pronged strategy in mind when developing Ramco chatbots. Firstly, they are almost autonomous employees in their own right: independent learners that amass data on how a company works based on observation of employees’ interactions.
As with any employee, training a bot is therefore a dynamic and inexact process. There will inevitably be a few stumbling blocks as their cognitive capabilities grow. We find that bots gain intelligence through application to increasingly complex cases, so the earlier we start teaching them, the better.
Secondly, we ensure that chatbots play well with other technology. To be truly effective and ensure long-term user retention in a market saturated with productivity apps, a bot needs to be functional across different platforms and environments.
At Ramco, our collaborative HR bot Chia (Chat Interface Administrator) integrates with existing messaging apps – Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype and more – as well as productivity software like Office 365 and Google Suite. Beyond chatting, it streamlines HR services like scheduling, onboarding, payroll and expenses. Users need not click through endless menus or wait for a support desk’s reply to get the data they need.
Another thing to remember when building bots is that, like any IT element, they are vulnerable to threats. In the age of ransomware, cybersecurity is of paramount importance. Chatbots collect user and enterprise-wide data as part of their machine learning capabilities – data that can be stolen and even used for phishing. End-to-end encryption and tight access controls, such as Ramco’s own two-factor SMS- or email-based authentication, are therefore a must when making bots.
The Future of the Bot Economy
Ramco Chia operates on the premise that conversation is the new UI, or user interface. The digital workflow should be fast and easy to navigate, so that decisions can be made quickly and efficiently. Chia responds to voice and text commands, with an ability to understand and respond that is rapidly becoming more seamless and sophisticated.
While bots are still in a nascent stage, advances in machine learning mean that bot technology is growing smarter every day. Bots can already delegate assignments and track components, and may someday help generate employee reviews or make hiring decisions.
The lines between consumer technology and enterprise IT are no longer clear. Today’s millennial consumers have been exposed to chatbots through ride-hailing, travel bookings and more. They expect similar efficiency of communication on the enterprise level.
To reap the full benefits of bots, businesses must act now. Waiting for the technology to mature means missing out on the exciting capabilities offered by this new mode of interaction between man and machine.
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Virender Aggarwal is CEO of Ramco Systems. He has been leading business transformations through technology for 30+ years. Learn more about Virender via Ramco Systems.