For companies struggling to leverage digital transformation, there is new hero in town, and it’s called intelligent automation. Intelligent automation is definitely much more than hype. But before companies carried away, they must understand and focus more on the “why”, “where” and importantly “how” they want to use intelligent automation. Understand that the why is really about the business case, and how, being the approach (tools and process) and with where being the use case. It is imperative for business, be a SMB or enterprise to understated not just how this new solution can benefit, but also its limitations. For example, this is NOT a complete replacement for human, but augment and for sure to a large degree supports reduction in repetitive roles. The benefits are many, and depending on the use case, certainly can help increase bottom line, bring innovation, deploy new channels for better experience, but care must be made to fully understand and set expectations.

One of the key aspects that differentiate a chatbot and an intelligent or cognitive assistance is that the latter is able to demonstrate greater impact on business outcomes via automation. Chatbots fall into category of a conversational FAQ, with a chat interface. Cognitive Assistants on the other hand have the potential to demonstrate real value if implemented correctly.

Some of the key benefits that early adopters of cognitive assistance are seeing are not just on the front office, but also serving internal operations. As an example, cognitive assistant can help reduce IT Help Desk costs buyautomating and servicing employee requests and issues at workplace spanning several functions such as IT, HR etc.

Build Vs buy

As with all things IT, one of the biggest debates for CIOs and companies is “Build” Vs Buy. And same goes for cognitive assistance. We have seen that companies typically engage with service integrators to build cognitive assistance. Now with any new development project, there are many risks involved.

So, companies need to evaluate if they are ready to take the risks especially deploying cognitive assistance is not an upgrade, but it’s a transformation. And mistake can be costly not just from cost perspective but also leave a big mark on the employee experience and potentially impact productivity.

Setting “right” expectations

Most users in general are familiar with Alexa or Siri, so the good news is, the modern user understand the art of possible so it is very critical to set the right expectations in what and how the cognitive assistant will deliver value ( i.e. improve support experience and positively impact their productivity). Identify areas that VA will need to impact. For example, the types of tasks that can be automated and the real impact to the experience.

Many implementations fall through the cracks also because of low usage or poor adoption strategies. Ultimately, do you want to build an Alexa for enterprise, or do you want to solve workplace issues for your employees in a better, quicker and easiest way possible. Note that the VA will need a lot of historic data to make it “truly” intelligent. so, understand that, for magic to happen, we need that secret sauce (read data and training).

Adoption (read culture)

We know that adoption can make or break a project. Companies implementing VA should, and must prepare well for change and adoption. This must include a comprehensive training and communication plan followed by user progressive and constant user experience feedback.

There is also a great emphasis on culture. We have seen that not all companies are open to self-service, but this is also due to lack of communication. The benefits of BVA are many so companies must invest both time and attention to help users “learn” this new way of workplace support. And it’s in the best interest of not just the business but also users, as no one wants to be on a support call for half an hour.