Intelligent assistants in the enterprise have typically been incorporated into customer-facing resources like IVRs and contact centers. In the best cases, they improve self-service by quickly and efficiently helping customers find answers to questions or resolve problems without the hassle of contacting a corporate call center or support desk. As I wrote in a previous post, “How Enterprise Intelligent Assistants are Already Delivering Business Value,” customer-facing intelligent assistants have proven their effectiveness.

Now, intelligent assistants are establishing additional business value by extending their reach further inside the enterprise. Opus Research had already noted how Openstream’s EVA (Enterprise Virtual Assistant) simplified employee access to frequently-used apps in enterprise BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) settings.

Two additional examples worth highlighting are an intelligent assistant designed for communications network administrators, created by Cisco and noHold, and a sales rep assistant offered by Oracle. These examples show that there are many compelling use cases for intelligent assistant technologies beyond customer self-service.

Project SARA Helps Network Admins
Cisco, the giant global networking company that coined the phrase “Internet of Everything,” collaborated with fourteen-year-old intelligent assistant (IA) technology specialist noHold in what they called “Project SARA” (for Services Automated Resolution Agent). SARA is an intelligent assistant designed to automate many of the tasks performed by network administrators. SARA is connected to backend systems, such as network routers and databases, and can pull information from these resources to answer questions or perform remediating actions.

Network administrators interact with SARA in a way very similar to how customers engage a virtual agent in a self-service scenario. Administrators type questions into a Q&A interface. SARA can provide answers that include clarifying images, such as network diagrams, and links to relevant documentation. Admins can ask SARA to perform tasks for them, such as getting a router’s serial number. SARA can also execute system commands, such as changing a router’s time zone or pulling up case information from a database.

The overall idea behind SARA is to reduce the complexity that a human engineer faces when managing and troubleshooting today’s complex networking systems. This article provides more details on the Cisco and noHold assistant and includes a video of SARA in action.

Oracle Voice Targets CRM Systems
Reducing complexity is the key theme behind Oracle’s Voice app for the Oracle Sales Cloud application. Oracle partnered with Nuance to create this speech-enabled mobile assistant. Enterprise applications are notoriously cumbersome and chock-full of features most people don’t even use. Oracle/s aim for the Voice app was to give sales reps a simple, fun way to engage with the backend Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

With the Oracle Voice, sales reps use voice commands to ask for data that can help them prepare for sales calls and meetings. They can also talk to the assistant to make updates to the CRM system. For example, after a meeting, they can request that the Voice app add a note about the meeting outcome or update information about a sales lead. Oracle Voice has the smarts to prompt the user for data it needs to update the system. And if the sales rep wants to add a new contact, the Voice app prompts the rep for the contact’s first name, last name, and phone number. For new tasks, the assistant asks for the task description and the due date. Oracle and its customers are finding that this approach leads to fewer errors and incomplete reports.

The face of enterprise productivity tools is rapidly changing, as intelligent assistance takes hold. Because natural language processing and machine learning continue to mature, we expect the capabilities of Intelligent Assistants to expand and improve constantly. Acceptance and frequent use of IAs within the enterprise will drive greater confidence to offer expanded roles for them to improve both employee and customer workflows.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Cisco, Oracle, customer experience, Enterprise IT, Intelligent Assistance, SFA