It’s time to face reality: We’re inefficient and unproductive at work.
We’re distracted. We’re overwhelmed. We’re bombarded. Alerts, buzzes, emails, notifications, and pings. We spend too much time buried in email and bogged down in meetings. We waste cycles weeding through rich applications to get one task done. It’s next to impossible to stay focused.
We’ve lost our way when it comes to communicating, collaborating and taking action. Unfortunately, businesses haven’t yet figured out how to adapt and solve for these challenges.
But that’s about to change thanks to two realities:
1. The inevitable evolution away from e-mail to short form, faster communication via messaging.
2. The rise of once futuristic technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
In companies, employees already push collaboration and communication out of the inbox — even though it creates risk.
What people think of as robots (AKA bots), or virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa, are becoming commonplace.
Enterprise leaders must innovate and get ahead. They need to make it easier for employees to get their jobs done. They must simplify applications. They need to bring together partners across the supply chain. They must serve their customers in ways never imagined 10 years ago.
The future of work can look different — less distractions and less complexity.
The time is now.
The Medium is the Message
As long as humans have roamed the earth, we have spent copious time communicating with each other.
In the last twenty years, email and messaging have become ubiquitous. Messaging has evolved from an easy method of online conversation to an enterprise-class technology. Far from being a fad for Millennials, it’s one the most important technologies of the early 21st century. What began as a convenient way for friends to exchange brief, text-based communications morphed to support group conversations, file sharing, video conferencing, and more.
Messaging will surpass e-mail in business. But alone, messaging won’t prepare companies for the future. It’s just the easiest, most comfortable, and fastest medium for conversing.
What’s Next? Messaging with Bots
Imagine if you could have a conversation with the business applications you rely on to do your job, just like you did a person. Instead of navigating through screens, you simply asked “it” to do something for you. And, that intelligent assistant knew your preferences, your location and other necessary information to get stuff done — instantly.
Imagine what that might look like for your next business trip. You tell this intelligent assistant exactly what your trip plans are and what you need it to do. It searches for flights in Concur. It remembers your corporate policies and corporate card information, informing you if something doesn’t look right or when your trip received manager approval. It pre-establishes your expense report template, and adds the trip contextto your calendar. When you arrive, it knows where you are and asks if you’re ready for it to book your Uber, knowing you want UberX not UberXL.
Now, imagine if all of the brands and businesses you trust — your bank, your heath insurance company, the retailers you buy from — built that same experience into their website.
It would be the ultimate personal assistant. It’s what people long for in this busy world — and believe it or not — it’s a near-term reality. Bots are here today.
Bots: The New UI for Business Applications and Websites
Together with a simple message-based interface, Bots will become the new user interface (UI) to both business applications and websites. They are the next evolution of enterprise applications, which have evolved from thick client-server applications to simpler web or SaaS-based applications to newer mobile apps.
But only Bots can be built in a matter of hours or days, by anyone that uses the APIs of that system.
Bots are omni-present and “headless.” They can live anywhere a business decides to put them. Bots carry your conversation history with them across channels and devices. You can start a conversation in one place and continue it in another — without losing context. They use location services to determine where you are, and propose what you might want them to do. Bots use Artificial Intelligence to gain context into your behaviors, recognizing patterns that help them better serve you. They use natural language processing so engagement becomes natural and conversational, not forced. Most importantly, Bots get stuff done — 24/7, 365.
The Future of Work
What will messaging and bots do for future work worlds? It’s a beautiful picture with endless possibilities.
Mindless work gets done instantly. Leaders gain visibility into their team’s activities and outcomes, without micro-managing. People respond to each other faster and more naturally. Teams collaborate more effectively, regardless of where they are. Businesses reach customers faster with the products or services they want, at exactly the right moment.
People get back to doing the jobs they love. Businesses improve employee engagement and customer service. A win-win across the board.
Kore on SAP Radio
Listen now to this recorded SAP Radio segment as technologists Raj Koneru (CEO at Kore), Vic Bhagat (Former CIO and EVP at EMC Corporation), and Uddhav Gupta (Global Vice President of Platform-as-a-Service at SAP) discuss how bots will revolutionize enterprises of the future.
To learn more about how bots can help you accomplish more, check out Kore, the workplace of the future.
Start working simply now, download the app.
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