A recent blog from our good friend at Oracle, Matthew Haavisto, announced that “classic” navigation will cease to be supported in PeopleTools 8.58. And thus ends the era of breadcrumbs within PeopleSoft! Some people will be sad to see them go, but the timing couldn’t be more perfect. The fact that breadcrumbs were ever needed was an indictment of everything that took place from the beginning of the web site revolution of the mid 90’s onwards. Gargantuan web sites with thousands of pages undoubtedly caused confusion, disorientation, and billions of wasted hours while humans were forced to hunt-and-peck to find what they were looking for.
Using methods trail-blazed by Hansel and Gretel (breadcrumbs) only highlighted that something was very wrong in the world of software development. There had to be a better way to help people “navigate” a world of chaos.
And the good news is that today there finally is. And it has nothing to do with dropdown mega menus, slide-out help, site maps, personalized feeds, online training, or even search engines. Instead it harkens back to the true sense of the word “classic”. And can be summarized with one word, “Hi”.
For thousands of years people have been using conversations to determine what they need to know and how to do things. This is the real “classic” tool for communication.
Pointing and clicking were merely devices used by software developers who expected humans to understand machines, when deep down, they always knew that to do their job properly that machines needed to understand humans.
Today chatbots/digital assistants offer a navigation-less way for people to interact with massively complex Enterprise software systems. In this new paradigm there is no navigation, the human just speaks what they want, and the technology does the rest.
This new form of “navigating” the contents of massive computing systems shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. In 1968 Stanley Kubrick introduced a talking computer (essentially a digital assistant called Hal 9000) in “2001: A Space Odyssey”. In 1984, when Steve Jobs launched the original Mac, it’s ability to say “Hello” at the press release was considered a key part of the event. Even though the Mac didn’t have any AI abilities whatsoever, this was clearly a hint by Jobs that ultimately this was what he saw computers really being capable of. Years later, with the introduction of Siri on the iPhone, he was able to see the early (though very flawed) realization of a long-held dream.
In 2011 IBM even raised a false hope that Hal 9000 was about to be a reality, when in fact it was just a teaser for what other organizations would eventually deliver.
Part AI, part Wizard of Oz, Watson just scratched the surface of what was truly possible.
Today, in 2019, we now live in a world where most people use one application on their phones more than any other: their text-messaging application. This further reinforces the idea that people just want to have conversations using a single application. The days of “there’s an app for that” are long gone, and why combining chatbots/Digital Assistants with text messaging applications is now the preferred method for people of all ages.
Over 58% of people surveyed feel more confident messaging a business than calling them on the phone. The same number feel more confident messaging than filling out a form on a website, and more than 55% feel more confident messaging than emailing a business.
56% of people surveyed would rather message a business than call customer service.
– Neilson
When asked why they message businesses, over 64% of people surveyed across 4 markets say it’s because they’re “always messaging anyway.”
The message to organizations globally is very clear. Old-style web navigation is a thing of the past. The new UI that people overwhelmingly prefer is a simple text messaging UI. No menus to hunt for, no complex web forms to complete, no figuring out which field to click into, no popups, no having to learn how multiple systems “work”, and no wondering if you did everything right.
At IntraSee we are happy to bid farewell to breadcrumbs. And, also, all the other impediments to the user experience that frustrate and challenge the use of Enterprise systems today. And we welcome the new era of a navigation-less UX that works the way people would like it to work.
Special Note: In the Enterprise world, organizations often have their own standards for which messaging application they prefer. Skype for Business once was very popular but has now been replaced by Microsoft Teams, which just recently surpassed Slack in terms of usage.
Other than the excellent UI that Microsoft Teams provides, it also has the advantage of running in the Microsoft Cloud (Azure). For organizations where security and data privacy matter (that should be everyone btw!), an architecture that supports Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) running in the Oracle Cloud, integrated with Microsoft Teams running in Azure will provide a premium level of security. Especially now that Oracle and Microsoft have enabled secure connectivity between their respective Clouds.
If you’d like to see a navigation-less UX in action, please contact us for a live demonstration.
At IntraSee we are super excited to announce that version DA-19.2.1 is currently being rolled out to all our customers. Also, many thanks to Oracle for all their support and collaboration as we utilize their excellent Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) technology via our Hybrid-Cloud compatible, GDPR compliant, and world leading meta-data driven middleware solution.
Our goal of automating every aspect of ODA design, build, test, and deployment wouldn’t be possible without having such an awesome partner to work with. So, with that said, here are the highlights for IntraSee DA-19.2.1:
Many of the product changes we focused on in this release were centered around making the overall chatbot solution simple to maintain by business analysts. Our key philosophy is that AI is massively complex and therefore requires a middleware layer to simplify it, such that functional experts can easily maintain and add to its skills. Therefore, if we focus on the middleware, our customers can focus on the business use-cases without having to create hundreds of thousands of lines of code, or having to become AI experts.
Additional automation and configuration were the keys to achieving these goals, plus improvements to the semantic analysis capabilities of the Vocabulary Engine. Our aim was to add even more means for a business user to train and direct the Digital Assistant, to ensure super-accurate matching of questions to answers – as well as adding to the scalability of the intent matching capabilities. Such that we are confident we can scale up to, and beyond, thousands of questions and still maintain accuracy of matching.
The main UI additions for this release were to add the option of embedding complex web forms (with lots of business logic) into the middle of a conversation. Plus adding support for Microsoft Teams as a channel, with all-important single sign-on included. The following screenshot shows a conversation in MS Teams with Charlie the ODA chatbot, speaking both Spanish and English. Out of the box ODA will speak over 100 languages, so this is a terrific and simple way of enabling multi-lingual self-service for your organization.
Figure 1: Charlie the Chatbot in MS Teams speaking Spanish and English
Contact us below to learn more and setup your own personal demo:
In January 2011, IBM unveiled on the TV show Jeopardy what they claimed to be the ultimate FAQ chatbot – Watson. Unfortunately, Watson proved to be “all hat and no cattle” and was never able to translate game show success into practical Enterprise AI success. Meanwhile the world has changed a lot, and AI has made many advances since those early days.
As is often the case with any new technology, the things that appear to be amazing in the early stages of innovation quickly become basic features as the technology matures and real business world problems are tackled and solved.
Today, a chatbot answering basic questions is considered a bare minimum requirement when considering what a chatbot needs to be capable of to be able to perform the jobs of actual humans.
We now use the term “Digital Assistant” or “Enterprise Assistant” to describe a chatbot that has many more skills than just being able to answer simple questions. Though often, the first time many organizations try out a chatbot solution, it’s by piloting what they believe is the easy option: an FAQ chatbot.
However, not all FAQ chatbot skills are created equal. In the AI world of FAQ capabilities there is a huge variance between different vendor solutions.
Think of it this way. Most people can sing, but most people aren’t great singers. In the same way, most chatbots have basic FAQ skills, but very few chatbots have great FAQ skills.
So, to cast much needed light upon this subject, we’ve created an FAQ about FAQ chatbots that should help explain the difference.
Q: Can I add as many questions as I want to an FAQ chatbot, and it’ll be able to answer all of them accurately once I’ve conducted supervised training?
A: For most FAQ chatbots the answer is no! Many of them start to suffer the dreaded “intent mismatch” issue at around 100 questions. Only Chatbots properly architected can handle thousands of questions accurately.
Q: What’s an “intent mismatch” issue?
A: This is when you ask a chatbot a question and it matches to the wrong question, and therefore gives you the wrong answer. This is the worst thing that can happen in the chatbot world, and will destroy confidence of it in your organization.
Q: What causes intent mismatching?
A: Oftentimes it’s poor training that’s the culprit, and that can be easily fixed. But there are scalability issues that tend to kick in around 100 questions (though it can happen at a lot less than that), whereby the chatbot starts to get more and more confused as to what it thinks the human is asking it.
Q: Why is there more likelihood of intent mismatch issues once I get close to 100 questions?
A: As the number of intents for a chatbot increases, the chance of some intents (questions) looking similar to other intents also increases. This is a scalability issue. If the FAQ chatbot is not architected properly it will suffer hugely from scalability issues, and will be unable to handle lots of questions that sound (in the mind of the chatbot) very similar.
Q: What do “good” FAQ chatbots do that allows them to solve the intent mismatch issue?
A: The good ones have multiple ways of understanding what the human is asking. They don’t just rely on simple NLP (Natural Language Processing) training, and are able to also factor in things like subject recognition, entity existence, and knowledge of your organization’s vocabulary. The reason this is a far superior means of intent matching is because this is how actual humans think. We don’t just use one indicator to understand what someone is saying, we deduce understanding from multiple elements and inferences of a sentence. And that’s how a really smart FAQ chatbot does it too, and how it’s able to handle thousands of questions and match them perfectly.
Q: What happens when the question is ambiguous because the human wasn’t completely clear on what they wanted?
A: This all depends on the chatbot. Some chatbots just cross their fingers, make a guess, and hope for the best. Some recognize ambiguity based on confidence level analysis (which isn’t always accurate either). While the very best have smart algorithms for dealing with ambiguity and will ask clarifying questions to make sure they understand the “intent” of the question.
Q: Does this mean that a good FAQ Chatbot is more complicated to manage than a bad one? Given how much more it is capable of doing?
A: No, quite the opposite. Because it’s massively more capable it makes it much easier to manage. Think of it this way, training something that already has lots of skills is much easier than training something that has very basic skills.
Q: Can FAQ chatbots handle the fact that though the question may be the same, the answer can vary due to location/job/department differences of the person asking the question? For example, the question may be, “what is the sick leave policy”. And depending on who is asking, the answer is often very different.
A: Like the mismatch question, the answer varies based on good chatbots vs bad chatbots. The bad ones only support basic 1-to-1 mappings. One question always equals one answer. In the Enterprise world this doesn’t work at all. So, the good chatbots are capable of understanding demographic information about the person asking the question and can tailor the answer based on that.
Q: My chatbot vendor said I need to load all my “answers” into their chatbot in the Cloud. Is this a good idea?
A: No, this is a terrible idea. Loading all your content into someone else’s environment is not only technically unnecessary, it’s also forcing you into dual maintenance of two sources of truth. A good chatbot needs to be able to plug into your many sources of content to provide the answer.
Q: But what if the answer is too long to show in a conversation? My chatbot vendor is telling me that I need to manually create abbreviated versions of all my unstructured content.
A: Best practice UX (user experience) is that the chatbot does provide summarized responses (with options to see the full answer) to make the conversation easy to understand by the human. However, good chatbots can use AI to auto-summarize the text, and this would be the recommended approach.
Q: Can FAQ chatbots only answer a question with static (ex: text, HTML, or web links) information, or can they also include data too?
A: Basic FAQ chatbots are limited to only being able to respond with static data, but the good ones can also include data from other systems. And the great ones can also bring back that data from both on-premise and multiple Cloud systems.
Q: It sounds like there’s a massive difference between FAQ chatbots and it’s important to look “under the hood” before I make a decision?
A: Yes, if you can take the time to test-drive a $20,000 car, then you should definitely test-drive any chatbot before making a decision.
If you’d like to see a great chatbot in action, please contact us for a live demonstration.
Our last blog featured analysis of how Workday is falling behind the times in 2019, and how it will hold its clients back in the era of disruption we are now entering.
It may come as a surprise to know, that for those PeopleSoft clients still running an on-premise solution that goes all the way back to 1987, that options in this new era are far more plentiful than Workday’s. So, how is that possible?
The reasons for this are that PeopleSoft comes with built-in features that Workday still doesn’t have (hint: a portal). While Oracle also provides comprehensive PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offerings that clients are actually allowed to use (unlike Workday). Also, again unlike Workday, Oracle doesn’t just allow their clients to enhance the UX any way they want, they encourage it!
So, here’s a list of the three fast and easy things you can do today to move your UX to the Cloud, and greatly improve it at the same time.
Note: All of the options below are managed services in the Cloud that you could configure as you please. But wouldn’t have the burden, or cost, of maintaining and upgrading.
Summary: Chatbot as a Service, reducing operating costs and improving user satisfaction.
Description: Try out a fully configurable out-of-the-box chatbot solution that is GDPR compliant and comes delivered supporting all the complex use-cases your Enterprise system requires. As well as supporting your on-premise PeopleSoft solutions, it also comes delivered with out-of-the-box integration with over 10 major SaaS vendors, plus adapters for other on-premise solutions like OBIEE.
Plus it is future-proofed to also fully integrate with all Oracle Cloud chatbot skills being developed by Oracle development teams, and can act as a “concierge chatbot” for any chatbot skills created on the Oracle ODA stack (Oracle Digital Assistant).
Implementation Overview: Fast 12-16 week pilot, with an option to roll out to the entire organization at the end of the pilot.
Summary: Portal as a Service, improving user satisfaction and efficiencies, while also adopting Oracle’s next-generation portal.
Description: Implement a one-stop-shop, GDPR compliant, portal that combines not just your on-premise PeopleSoft, but also comes delivered with out-of-the-box integration with over 10 major SaaS vendors, as well as adapters for other on-premise solutions like OBIEE.
Also, as this would be using Oracle CEC, you would now have access to a state-of-the-art content management system too.
Plus it is future-proofed to also fully integrate with all Oracle Cloud applications, such that it could be your portal of choice for the next twenty+ years. And with this being a cloud solution there would be no environment maintenance and upgrades required by your team. Just a plug and play option for your business users to extend as they wish.
Note: For organizations already using the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub as an on-premise portal, this would not only replace the need for that environment (allowing you to decommission it), but would also greatly improve the UX as part of the implementation.
Implementation Overview: Fast 12-16 week implementation.
Summary: Portal as a hosted Service, improving user satisfaction and efficiencies, while also moving to a hosted portal solution in the Oracle Cloud (IaaS), and utilizing a fully managed PeopleSoft Interaction Hub.
Description: Implement a one-stop-shop, GDPR compliant, portal that combines not just your on-premise PeopleSoft, but also comes delivered with out-of-the-box integration with over 10 major SaaS vendors, as well as adapters for other on-premise solutions like OBIEE.
Plus it is future-proofed, such that any “pagelets” that exist in the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub can easily be converted to be drag-and-drop components in the Oracle Content & Experience Cloud, if you subsequently move to that platform in the future.
Note: For organizations already using the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub as an on-premise portal, this would not only replace the need for that environment (allowing you to decommission it), but would also greatly improve the UX as part of the implementation.
Implementation Overview: Fast 12-16 week implementation.
Contact us below to learn more and setup your own personal demo:
It’s almost three years since we wrote the original Workday blog, and since then the world has changed a huge amount. But, surprisingly, Workday has not. Back in 2016 they were a cool back office HCM Cloud SaaS provider, and today, well, they’re still the same. Only what was shiny and glittery back then, now looks a tad jaded and long in the tooth in 2019.
So, while doing a decent job of becoming PeopleSoft 2.0 was definitely an accomplishment of sorts, the world has changed enough over the past few years that you have to wonder what the attraction is now.
So, with that said, here’s 10 reasons why Workday may not be a great option in 2019.
1. It lacks UX innovation tools or solutions (while its competitors are racing by it).
It’s almost two years now since Workday announced details on what their “intent” to open up their PaaS platform would actually mean. So, what’s the status now?
After the passage of two years, we were hoping to see much more progress in this area. Unfortunately, as of today, Workday appears to have made almost no progress. On their developer.workday.com web site, they advertise limited availability to be one of the first to be able to use their PaaS platform.
Limited Availability: This exclusive program gives you the opportunity to be one of the first organizations using the Workday Cloud Platform. Create business-impacting applications leveraging Workday’s technology. Help influence our roadmap.
– developer.workday.com
2. It’s turned its back on the new UI revolution: chatbots.
Also, and maybe a lot more concerning, Workday’s participation in the AI revolution and the new era of disruption appears to be stalled in the chatbot realm. If you go to www.workday.com and search for chatbot, you get zero results. Whereas if you go to www.oracle.com and perform the same search, you get over 1,100 results. That’s a massive differentiation.
Meanwhile, the advice of Gartner is that conversational UI (aka chatbots/digital assistants) is a critical feature of our lives that we all need to be focused on for the next decade.
“Conversational AI-first” will supersede ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ as the most important high-level imperative for the next 10 years”.
– Gartner Sept 2016
Certainly, we are just a few years away from wondering how Enterprise systems were ever usable without some kind of digital assistant. In the same way we would now wonder how we ever managed to use the web without Google search.
And here’s 10 reasons why the Enterprise needs a chatbot solution, if you need to be more persuaded.
3. It’s a closed community
Innovation requires activity by multiple parties to spark new ideas, and new ways of doing things. Workday believes that only they can innovate on their platform, and that any attempt to do so by their clients or other vendors needs oversight, control, and permission. They have a euphemism for this: “curation”. In the Workday world, curation is the means of stifling innovation. Or, to quote their CEO, Aneel Bhusri:
“Right now what we’re seeing is what I’d call small pieces of additional functionality rather than applications that have a larger purpose. So the potential impact is limited. You can bring whatever code you want but, we curate and certify everything that goes into that platform and will continue to do so. We have to because we have a responsibility to ensure that customers remain compliant”.
“We are approaching verticalization and extensions differently to others. We are curating everything and will discuss our plans with partners so that there is a clear line between the areas we will enter and those where our partners will have a free run”
– Aneel Bhusri
The bolded comments are the ones we feel are most pertinent. In the new age of digital disruption: agility and innovation are the key requirements of any organization. Without these things, you cannot adapt. Having an Enterprise system that requires curation and certification will be an impediment to clients and partners ability to provide the UX that their organizations want. And in this new world of digital disruption and transformation, this will be a major inhibitor to progress. Certainly, with the rise of chatbots as the new UI, organizations need the ability to adapt to these changes, and should not risk being forced to go through a curation and certification process. Or, even worse, be told, “no, you can’t do that”.
4. It’s not fully mature
How long has PeopleSoft been around? Forever, right? Well, technically since 1987. But in the software world, that’s pretty much forever. And guess what? There are still new features and functionality being added to it each year. Oracle has done a great job keeping on top of things and expanding functionality to meet demand. So that’s over 30 years of development. Building a mature Enterprise system takes decades. It’s a colossal undertaking. For Workday to catch up to all that development will take many years, if ever, before they can match PeopleSoft feature for feature.
And now, to make matters worse for Workday, Oracle has not only passed them by with their HCM Cloud SaaS offering. But they are also the undisputed leader with their Cloud ERP (aka Financials).
Meanwhile Workday still has a very long way to go in the Campus world, and the Financials world, to really be able to describe themselves as a mature Enterprise software vendor.
5. It’s like selecting a client-server solution, when everyone else is selecting web-based systems.
As any NFL quarterback will tell you, you don’t throw the ball to where the receiver is, you throw it to where the receiver will be.
Likewise, you don’t select an Enterprise software vendor for what they are doing today, you select one based on where they will be in one year and beyond.
And right now, there’s a revolution taking place in the field of UX. Web-based systems focused on back office use will become dinosaurs, while systems built with conversational UI’s (chatbots/digital assistants) that everyone in the organization can use, will be the new standard for all Enterprise systems.
Selecting a vendor in 2019 that has no chatbot solution, would be akin to selecting a client-server solution in 1997. Or buying a VHS player, while everyone is buying DVD’s.
Selecting Workday is a tough buy in 2019. There’s a sense that they are being passed by, and are drifting into a state of irrelevance. Mostly due to an inability, or reluctance, to change with the times.
6. There’s more to an Enterprise system than just having a pretty face
There’s no doubt that Workday has attractive features. And at first glance it does catch the eye (though even that has waned over the past two years).
But from a UX perspective it’s way below par. Having a pleasant UI and poor UX (there’s a difference) is something that can be glossed over in the sales cycle, but not when real people start to use it.
7. It’s not focused on the complete user experience
As Owen Wilson wistfully said in Wedding Crashers, “I think we only use 10% of our hearts”. Workday falls into this trap. Out of the box it doesn’t satisfy the complete user experience. Just a small fraction. How it’s implemented, and the tools provided, are the key to unlocking the real potential of an Enterprise system. In fact, the whole concept of an “Enterprise system” is typically something less tangible than people would like to admit. For most organizations it’s really an eco-system of multiple systems that the user is somehow expected to navigate and comprehend as one system (like the universe).
Unfortunately, the human brain is not wired to process complex and poorly connected applications (unless you’re Stephen Hawking). Which leads to massive under-utilization of the true potential that Enterprise systems could provide (which thus creates an under-realization of ROI). Owen Wilson was right. 10% is a pretty accurate number.
8. It lacks a “portal”
In 2016 we noted that Workday has no Portal. In 2019, they still have no portal. And there’s a fascinating historical reason for this.
Basically, the team that left PeopleSoft to form Workday never had a clue how to fully utilize the PeopleSoft portal (now called the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub) while they were at PeopleSoft (pre-2005). It was a source of frustration for many people. So, when they formed Workday, they just assumed that if they couldn’t find a reason to use it then, then there was no reason to build one now. Obviously, this was one bad decision, layered on a bunch more bad decisions.
All Enterprise systems need some kind of one-stop shop that integrates everything nicely for the user. That’s not even debatable in 2019 (and wasn’t really in the year 2000, or 2005 either). Though the irony is that the truest realization of a one-stop shop is a digital assistant (aka chatbot). It’s the ultimate navigation-less UI. And, unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, Workday doesn’t have that either.
So today, Workday has no portal. Meanwhile PeopleSoft has the Interaction Hub, and Oracle has the Content & Experience Cloud (a terrific portal that actually works with PeopleSoft, as well as other Cloud applications).
9. It won’t integrate with your corporate systems
All organizations have their own eco-system of internal systems that gradually morphed and developed over the years. We can’t just pretend they don’t exist. And if people are using these systems (which they must be) then that makes them part of the usability experience, and they need to be brought into the fold like everything else. Let’s call this Exhibit B in the case for why everyone needs a good portal. And until Workday has one, then they are missing the boat.
10. It’s 2019, and a “brain” for the Enterprise isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement.
It’s undoubtedly a brave new world that we are about to enter. If 1997 and the advent of web-based systems was a seismic shock to the Enterprise world. Then the new era we are about to enter will be 10 times what occurred back then. Enterprise vendors that don’t deliver a “brain” will leave their customers in a technological wilderness. Some people will try and “roll their own”, which will be shown to be a big mistake. Creating a brain for the Enterprise may sound easy, but it isn’t. Some people will try and use tools like Microsoft LUIS, which is not a good fit, or IBM Watson, which is equally flawed. Others will use vertical solutions, like Salesforce with Einstein, that can only do small chunks of what they need to do.
The correct way to enter this new era is to adopt something already built, that can be configured for your Enterprise needs. Oracle and IntraSee have partnered to provide such a solution and can demonstrate exactly what it looks like.
Please contact us for a live demonstration of what the future looks like, and how you can implement it today.
