With the announcement of Cortana Analytics Suite, Microsoft is fast developing intelligent assistant products and solutions for the enterprise, underscoring a trend I wrote about recently.

Cortana Analytics Suite consists of a package of machine-based learning solutions that companies can implement to gain new insights about their customers, product lines and business. The underlying technology and focus on predictive analytics seems to compete squarely with IBM Watson’s cognitive computing solution.

At least on the surface, the business-ready components that Microsoft says are already available seem more practical and compelling than many publicized use cases for IBM Watson.

For example, the Cortana Analytics Suite offers Customer Churn Prediction. Machine-learning algorithms track historical trends and can flag the possibility of losing a customer or subscriber before it’s too late to do something about it. Other components help forecast product demand more accurately or offer targeted product recommendations. It’s easy to see how valuable tools like these could be for professionals within the enterprise.

Still, it’s not completely clear how Microsoft will integrate these predictive analytic capabilities into the Cortana intelligent assistant personality.

A video showcasing the use of the Cortana Analytics Suite at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health Center offers a glimpse into what such an integration could look like. In the video, a healthcare professional asks Cortana to summarize a patient’s health status. Cortana reports that the patient’s weight has increased notably within the past 24 hours, alerting the provider to check in with the patient.

Cortana can also push reminders and messages of encouragement directly to patients, demonstrating a well-rounded assistant, able to offer predictive insights to professionals and personalized outreach to patients, customers and end users.

The Cortana Analytics Suite is the start of a what will most likely become a steady migration of intelligent assistants into the enterprise.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Microsoft, intelligent Assistants, IBM Watson, Cortana