Use These 4 Tools to Realize Contextualization of IT- 86% IT Pros Believe in the Potential of Human+AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has now definitively exited the hype stage. Industry leaders agree that a combination of AI and automation can make business processes more contextual, reducing the possibility of human errors.

AI-driven contextual intelligence is a massive buzzword for enterprises at large. It helps to gather valuable information from a noisy data background and apply it to the relevant business processes. For instance, you can send contextual updates to a call center executive, guiding him/her across every step of the customer service journey. In the manufacturing world, IoT sensors can capture contextual data (temperature, pressure, etc. ) and adjust how equipment functions, making sure that they deliver sustained performance in dynamic environments.

“Industry leaders agree that a combination of AI and automation can make business processes more contextual.”

In other words, contextual intelligence uses AI to filter out background noise and zero-in on the most important insights for employees. Next, it employs automation to steer business processes in the right direction, benefiting customers.

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A 2019 survey by leading analysts at IDG and LTM Research took a closer look at the potential of AI-led intelligent automation technology. Take a look at its findings:

● 86% of IT executives agree that AI, RPA, and human efforts must be well-integrated by 2020.

● But only 12% are doing “really well” in this regard, as on date.

● Key benefits of adopting this technology include a better CX (86%), a more rewarding experience for employees (92%), and revenues from the monetization of new opportunities (69%).

By adopting the latest AI platforms, enterprises can inject contextualization into core processes and improve their effectiveness. Fortunately, SaaS-based delivery means that there is no need for from-scratch development. Let’s consider 4 SaaS tools that can be configured to meet your enterprise needs with minimal effort.

“86% of IT executives agree that AI, RPA, and human efforts must be well-integrated by 2020, but only 12% are doing well.”

1. interface.ai

interface offers an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) powered by artificial intelligence (AI). What fascinates me is that it is capable of holding multi-turn conversations (just like human beings) thanks to semantic language understanding.

Currently, interface has three function-specific solutions: Workforce Intelligence, CRM, and lead generation. It works with a diverse set of industries including BFSI, retail, TTH, and telecom. 2019 was a landmark year for Interface, as the company helped Texas Dow Employees Credit Union (TDECU) increase customer acquisition by 5x times.

Potentially, interface could be used to introduce contextualization in contact centre operations at scale or creating contextualised shared service centres blended with digital and physical workforce . For example, Yes Bank could enable smart transactions via interface. The tool’s AI helped extract contextual data to address customer queries. It also identified the right action based on customer needs, drawing from the staff availability data residing in the IT ecosystem.

interface is compatible with 100+ languages, equipped to contextualize inputs and queries in a wide variety of localization scenarios. The future looks extremely bullish for interface, given that the company is just five years old.

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“In 2019, interface helped Texas Dow Employees Credit Union (TDECU) increase customer acquisition by 5x times.”

2. Arago

Arago is an employee experience transformation company, led by its flagship AI platform called HIRO?. HIRO is powered by a whopping 20 years of R&D investments, finetuning its AI capabilities so that it can autonomously address ambiguous and complex business problems.

In 2019, Arago announced two major wins as it partnered with SwissComm and HDP Management Consulting. These partnerships are sure to accelerate Arago’s solution delivery capabilities, following in the heels of the five awards that it received in 2017 and 2018.

“HIRO is powered by a whopping 20 years of R&D investments, finetuning its AI capabilities.”

Founded in 1995, Arago’s platform has been in commercial deployment for just five years — but it has made massive strides already. It was able to beat human gamers in the civilization-building video game, Freeciv, choosing the right combination from 15,000+ possible game solutions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLCYgasM7SKuPDjMvwCCFq6YTFcWulU5lo&v=AYu5UgBMyU0

Arago promises contextualization capabilities like never before. It is powered by semantic data map for understanding, community portal for learning and HIRO engine for solving. What fascinates me how it managed understanding and then converts understanding into knowledge items(KI’S) addressing where, when and what situations with factual, situation and action KI’s. Its AI is near-autonomous, letting it detect the root context for various IT issues and their appropriate ownership. It analyzes the entire IT landscape, across applications, resources, software, and machines to create a holistic and contextualized understanding of a company’s automation needs. This allows it to auto-sequence IT tickets and assign ownership with minimal human efforts.

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3. Ayehu

Ayehu is a popular Arago competitor providing autonomous resolution for alerts and IT service requests, powered by contextual AI. It boasts a faster mean time to resolution by as much as 90%. Ayehu is a completely agentless platform, differentiating itself from the many enterprise IT assistants out there. It is also good news that Ayehu integrates with apps such as ServiceNow, McAfee ESM, SolarWinds, and more.

“It boasts a faster mean time to resolution by as much as 90%. Ayehu is a completely agentless platform.”

Ayehu has a very busy product roadmap — it just launched Ayehu NG V1.6 (an ML automation tool) in February of 2020. It is also ISO 27001 certified as on date. Last year, it launched version 5 of its platform, as well as its Automation Academy to equip IT executives with up to date AI knowledge.

This is extremely critical, as 89% of respondents on the survey I mentioned struggle to adapt to technology. What excites me about this technology is openness to integrate with multiple platforms and integrates across all process covering customer, IT and business, thus helping organisations building a digital workforce.

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Ayehu’s virtual service assistant (VSA) is capable of understanding the context of various IT activities. They can hold realistic conversations and generate authentic dialogue based on the unique context of the data they have received.

For companies eager to embrace contextualization, Ayehu is a standout offering and has gained recognition among the world’s leading workflow orchestration vendors.

4. Thoughtonomy (Blue Prism Cloud)

Thoughtonomy was picked up by the automation giant, Blue Prism, last year for a cool $100 million (approximately). This led to the formation of the new Blue Prism Cloud which has been pitted as a direct competitor to the likes of interface.ai. Blue Prism is definitely an industry stalwart, given its close partnership with IBM.

If function-wise solutions are what you’re looking at, Blue Prism Cloud has solutions for IT, HR, customer service, payroll, finance, and marketing as well. In January of this year, Blue Prism Cloud announced three SaaS offerings to transform digital workplaces. This follows the launch of solutions for hybrid/on-premise deployment in November of 2019.

“Thoughtonomy was picked up by the automation giant, Blue Prism, last year for a cool $100 M. This led to the formation of the new Blue Prism Cloud.”

Customer wins by Thoughtonomy last year include British utilities supplier Utilita, UK’s National Health Service (NHS), and Connect Health.

Thoughtonomy has a rich history in enabling intelligent automation, powered by a clear understanding of the user’s context. Blue Prism Cloud (powered by Thoughtonomy technology) is a relatively new solution, but one with a lot of promise. It can derive meaning and generate contextualized visual information to streamline IT management. What excites me about Thoughonomy and Blue Prism integration is that they can be the powerhouse for automation in an enterprise across all functions.

While interface is a contextual conversation enabler, Arago an autonomous solution builder, and Ayehu is a tool for contextual IT resolution, Thoughtonomy (Blue Prism Cloud) has a very different premise — it offers cloud-based automation that’s purpose-built for your needs.

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Why Disruptors are Fast Gaining Ground

The world of contextualization was long dominated by large providers such as Amazon, IBM, Oracle, and Google. It was assumed that they would have the requisite resources and data assets to drive digital transformation at scale.

However, a new picture is gradually beginning to emerge. Disruptors like interface, Arago, Ayehu, and Thoughtnomy do not have the complex technology roadmaps or dependencies that could hold back larger providers. They also boast of a simple, out of the box deployment plan, which is perfectly suited to the needs of fast-growing small to mid-sized businesses.

These companies are also keenly focused on R&D and have a highly specialized business (unlike Amazon, IBM, Oracle, or Google). As a result, their development and innovation efforts are routed specifically to next-gen AI and its use in contextualization/automation, instead of being spread across a broad range of topics.

Specifically, disruptors like the four companies I mentioned are ideal for two transformation aspects:

● Back-end transformation/employee experience modernization — Solutions like Ayehu and Arago focus on IT modernization, delivering seamless IT experiences to employees. It brings about a 360-degree transformation at the enterprise back-end, identifying the context behind business processes, opportunities for automation, and use cases for AI intervention.

In other words, these tools can go a long way in building a digital workforce where employees are engaged in only strategic value-add and technology takes care of everything else.

● Front-end transformation/customer experience modernization — interface and Thoughtonomy pay closer attention to the customer-facing side of organizations. For instance, Thoughtonomy can gather, manipulate, and visualize customer data to present a contextual picture for accurate forecasting.

Thoughtonomy’s technology automates customer management as well as data governance to maximize the value of incoming queries/inputs. interface’s model-driven platform for virtual assistants can revolutionize customer service interactions, allowing companies to scale quickly.

The potential of these companies to usher in both back-end and front-end transformation benefitting employees and customers alike is a key reason why they are fast gaining ground.

Over to You

Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg. In a fast-evolving digital world, there are several options for companies looking to embrace AI for smarter automation and contextualization. And it is vital that this is a business priority! Less than 50% of enterprises in the report cited said that they have deployed intelligent automation technology.

If you’re interested in this space but are unsure about how to get started, email me at [email protected] for a personalized consultation