It was a pleasure to attend a fantastic Gartner conference in Las Vegas last month (December 4-6, 2017). And while there was a chill in the desert air, the team at Gartner brought plenty of heat with terrific keynotes and sessions.
So, what we’d like to do is break down the key messaging that we got from the conference, based on the tracks that we followed, and then we’ll apply what we think is very sound advice to practical steps that can be applied today.
So here we go: Gartner’s key messaging from December 2017.
IT organizations need to learn a new word: “Yes”
Over many years, IT has become known for using the word “no” far more often than the business community would like to hear it. Gartner believes that in the new era of digital disruption, IT needs to transform itself from the party of “no”, to the party of “yes”. Much of what followed during the conference was clear advice on how to go about this transformation.
IT needs to stop building stuff that already exists
In the year 2018, it’s amazing how much has already been built, productized, and is fully supported by one vendor or another (including IntraSee). And most of it is now available for subscription in the Cloud. Gartner’s clear advice for IT is to stop building things that are already built. Ultimately, it’s not just a waste of time and money, it also contributes to IT being primarily focused on being in “maintenance mode”, instead of “innovation mode”. Which, in turn, leads to the word “no” being an automatic response to many requests that would be hugely beneficial to the organization. If IT is always busy reinventing the wheel, then there’s no time available for tasks that really do add value.
IT should embrace disruption and be a force multiplier
By utilizing products, tools, and knowledge that already exists, and not embarking on lengthy DIY projects, IT can accomplish a lot more with the same amount of effort and money. IT should become the catalyst for ensuring things get done the right way and for the right cost. And by doing so, can transform itself to becoming a group that enables differentiation and innovation in the enterprise. This, Gartner says, is a critical path in the evolution of IT.
Plan on multiple chatbot pilots in 2018, but don’t try and build solutions in-house
Gartner strongly advises that building chatbot solutions in-house is not the way to go, as they feel there is enough already built that can be re-used in the Cloud. However, they do feel that now is the right time for organizations to dip their toes into the chatbot pool, and that by the end of 2018 organizations should aim to move some of these pilots into production. You can read more about our own chatbot pilot program.
Stop customizing your Enterprise software
This is a very interesting one, and we totally agree. But one thing we’d add is that the vast majority of customizations are made for UX reasons. And if there’s one place you shouldn’t be making UX changes, it’s in an Enterprise system. We would suggest that a portal/PaaS technology is a better platform for UX changes, and hugely alleviates the need to customize your Enterprise system. This is a great example of spending money to save money. That’s called a win-win!
IT needs to use a different toolbox
For years, many organizations have been building solutions using a vast array of on-premise technologies. Gartner’s advice is to start using more advanced tools that exist in the Cloud. While this may sound easier said than done, 2018 is the year to start doing it. For example, many of our clients have been using PeopleTools as a development platform for a number of years. Well, today there are many options in the Cloud that provide better capabilities, and are also not entering deprecation-status (Note: PeopleSoft has a finite shelf-life).
To that end, we’ve created a simple guide that describes what you have now, and what we think is the equivalent in the Cloud that you should look at adopting instead. And the great news is that it’s not as daunting as you may think. And, also, is often something you can do prior to moving off PeopleSoft. In fact, we would strongly recommend that many of them are among the first things you should do, as they will better prepare you for life in the Cloud, and the new era of AI and digital disruption.
ON-PREMISE PEOPLETOOLS: Fluid Tiles & Navigation
CLOUD EQUIVALENT: Content & Experience Cloud
There’s a general principle that states that building a UX solution inside your HCM system is a bad idea. The reason being that it is now tied to one HCM solution, and if you change your base HCM solution, you then lose your entire UX investment. Better to create a UX solution that is “portable” across any Enterprise configuration, and can easily adapt to more complex requirements. This principle would include Campus solutions as well.
Also, Fluid Tiles is a PeopleTools technology solution that lacks the flexibility to integrate cleanly with all the other applications in your Enterprise, as well as having a very basic UI. Plus, as this is a legacy solution you’ll soon be moving away from, any investment in this technology will be lost.
Figure 1: Fluid Tiles ESS Landing Page
WHY IS THE CLOUD VERSION BETTER? It’s far more polished and user friendly, plus it’s a technology solution that’s state of the art, and much easier to maintain. It can also be used with your PeopleSoft solution today, and any Cloud provider too. You also get the advantage of now being on a stack that is getting a lot of investment by Oracle, and can be integrated with their entire Cloud stack, as well as your PeopleSoft stack.
Figure 2: Plug & Play Modern Tiles with Oracle’s Content & Experience Cloud
ON-PREMISE PEOPLETOOLS: Approval Workflow Engine (AWE)
CLOUD EQUIVALENT: Oracle Process Cloud
AWE is a PeopleTools solution that has been both complicated and limited in capability for many years. There are better solutions you can use now that can also be used in the Cloud and are not tied to one technology. Plus, like some other PeopleTools features, this one doesn’t migrate to the Cloud either.
Figure 3: PeopleTools AWE
WHY IS THE CLOUD VERSION BETTER? It’s more intuitive, has far more capability, and is used widely within the Oracle PaaS suite. Plus it can be used with your PeopleSoft system today. This means it’s a tool for both the present and the future. What’s also interesting is that not only can Process Cloud be used for transactional workflow (like MSS approvals), it can also be used within the Content & Experience Cloud for content management approvals.
Figure 4: A More Modern Way to Create Workflow
ON-PREMISE PEOPLESOFT: Interaction Hub Content Management System (CMS)
CLOUD EQUIVALENT: Oracle Content & Experience Cloud CMS
We know there’s a lot of organizations using the CMS that comes delivered with the Interaction Hub. It is used to house literally millions of digital assets worldwide. And while it has been very useful in many situations, it does still lack the slick UX that CMS’s come delivered with today. The great news is that moving from one CMS platform to another should be pretty straight forward given the suite of API’s to support this within the Interaction Hub. Plus if the receiving CMS also has a suite of API’s, then the entire process can be automated. As an FYI, at IntraSee we will be offering automated content migration from the Interaction Hub to the Oracle Content & Experience Cloud in 2018.
Figure 5: Interaction HUB CMS
WHY IS THE CLOUD VERSION BETTER? Content Management Systems (CMS) have changed a lot over the years. Not only have the UI’s become much better, but there are even more API’s available if you want to go the “headless CMS” route that is becoming more and more popular today (and with the advent of Chatbots, this is pretty much a requirement these days). This translates to a more flexible way for managing, and publishing, all your digital assets.
Figure 6:Modern Digital Asset Management
ON-PREMISE PEOPLETOOLS: CUSTOM-BUILT Fluid Components
CLOUD EQUIVALENT: Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS)
While we believe that using delivered Fluid components is a great idea (and many of our clients do this), we wouldn’t recommend building your own Fluid Components. Other than the obvious reason of obsolescence when you retire your PeopleSoft system, there’s also the massive amount of retraining of your IT group that this would entail. Building Fluid components is not a simple process and will require a huge amount of skillset retooling. Why do that in 2018 when there are other options that don’t have such a short shelf-life? As Gartner says, time to use a different toolbox.
Figure 7: Fluid Component Development
WHY IS THE CLOUD VERSION BETTER? It’s more intuitive, and can be used in a collaborative fashion by teams of business experts and developers, and is used widely within the Oracle PaaS suite. Plus it can be used with your PeopleSoft system today. If you’re looking for a form creation tool that can work with Oracle HCM Cloud, PeopleSoft, and other REST based SaaS systems, then this is it.
Figure 8: A More Modern and Collaborative Component Builder
ON-PREMISE PEOPLETOOLS CHATBOTS: N/A
CLOUD ALTERNATIVE: Oracle Intelligent Bots, plus other chatbot.ai’s
There is no PeopleTools based chatbot framework – hence the N/A. Because of this you may end up waiting multiple years before you do anything with this technology, and that will be way too late. By the year 2020 Chatbot development will surpass mobile development, according to Gartner. Now is the time to put your toe in the water. Your business community undoubtedly wants to do this, so now is the time to say, “Yes”!
HOW TO PILOT/POC A CHATBOT SOLUTION: Thankfully this is something you can do today, regardless of whether you are using PeopleSoft or any other Cloud application. And what’s more, it can be done in twelve weeks. You’ll get to see how it works in your organization, and how logistically it is implemented and maintained. And you’ll be able to test it in key functional areas, while also getting feedback from multiple business groups. Implementing a chatbot solution can be done efficiently and within a reasonable budget, so try it in a pilot and see for yourself. Make 2018 the year you figure out what works best for you with your first step to AI and chatbot adoption.
We are now entering a new era of digital disruption. Getting your organization ready to thrive in this new reality will be the most important thing you can do today. To find out more, please contact us:
From Charles Darwin’s seminal study, Origin of Species:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”
– Charles Darwin
This was the core philosophy behind his ground-breaking book, and has been paraphrased often as: adapt or perish.
Without doubt we are now entering a new era of digital disruption. Wherever you look, large organizations are either reinventing themselves (called self-disruption) or they are struggling to survive. Over the years we have seen once great companies that could not adapt fall by the wayside. Remember Blockbuster Video? A power house video rental company that could not adapt to the change to an online video consumption world. Now compare and contrast that with Netflix, a company built on the ability to rent DVD’s online via snail mail! Their world changed too, but they changed ahead of it, and rebuilt their entire business model. Now we see Walmart as a massive online presence, at the same time Amazon is purchasing Whole Foods. Even companies like IBM and GE are showing signs of struggling in this new era. Our world is being turned upside down by technology. And today, AI is leading the charge. In five years the corporate landscape will look very different than it does today.
Meanwhile, the Cloud introduced disruption to the Enterprise software market some ten years ago, and organizations have been moving in droves at an ever-increasing pace. To the extent that companies like Oracle have now reinvented themselves as Cloud providers. Something completely unthinkable just three years ago.
But, even more important than the Cloud, AI has burst to the forefront of our lives. And it’s here to stay.
“Conversational AI-first will supersede ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ as the most important high-level imperative for the next 10 years”
– Gartner Sept 2016
For those of us that live in the world of Enterprise software, the big questions are: how will the current Enterprise software vendors deal with this disruption? And what should you do, given that you are probably in the process of selecting a new Cloud vendor. Knowing full well that your next decision will have a massive impact on your organization for what may be the most impactful decade in Enterprise software history.
Given all that, we believe that the most important aspect of any Cloud vendor for the next ten years will be its ability to be an enabler for adapting to new disruptions, and by not being a roadblock to innovation. Put simply, does that vendor provide the tools and flexibility needed for you to survive in this new era of digital disruption?
To paraphrase Darwin, the winning Cloud vendor won’t be the biggest, or the one with most features. It will be the one that provides solutions that can most easily be adapted by their clients to allow them to compete in the new era of digital disruption.
Because of this we do have concerns about the following recent announcements by Workday’s CEO, Aneel Bhusri, with regards to opening up access to their platform.
“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 your ability to adapt to changing requirements in your world. And one thing we know for sure, is that change is coming, and it’s coming fast.
Our recommendation is to keep your options as flexible as possible. Do not invest any more in deprecated technologies, embrace the Cloud, embrace AI, and use this new era of digital disruption to adapt your Enterprise system to the new needs of tomorrow. And, above all, do not lock yourselves into a technological blind alley.
This is our very firm, high level, opinion of what is important. And, as a UX company, we believe that the next era of Enterprise software will be characterized by how it interacts with employees, managers, students and faculty, and will become less focused on how happy the back office is.
Organizations that focus too much on back office satisfaction will continue to see poor productivity and satisfaction in their organization, as well as high operational costs associated with unnecessarily labor-intensive processes.
The following video shows the kind of things we expect to become the new normal in the Enterprise:
And this really is the core of the issue as we see it. Workday’s reaction to the new era of change is to institute a model of curation and certification. This is very much a response we would expect from a company that is very much focused on back office usage of their software (which is excellent, btw). Unfortunately, what is missing is the recognition that the market is about to dramatically change, and that they need to change with it. Being a cool back office HCM system in the Cloud was what got them to where they are today, but that most certainly won’t work tomorrow. Also, while curation and certification make sense in a back office world, it most certainly doesn’t work once employees, managers, students, and faculty start getting involved. This demographic expects innovation and agility, because that’s what they are seeing everywhere else. And for organizations to see reduced operational costs, and increased organization satisfaction and efficiency, they will need to start giving access to their Enterprise systems in ways they never imagined before.
To illustrate the mindset, the classic measures of SaaS Cloud providers’ success are:
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these are terrible indicators of success. Low issue counts can be achieved by giving as few people as possible access to the system, and by implementing the solution in the most conservative fashion possible. The theory being that the less people can do, the less things can go wrong.
And measuring customer satisfaction by asking the people who selected the SaaS provider what their opinion is, will always give you a false positive. Of course they like it, they (or their manager) selected it!
And asking the back office staff how happy they think the employees are will never give you an accurate rating. Of course they think everyone loves it.
Ultimately, what Blockbuster discovered (the hard way), was that improving the look of their stores, rearranging the shelves, and changing the rewind policy (remember that?) wasn’t good enough to save them. The things that worked when Blockbuster started were no longer relevant when Blockbuster finally went under. Netflix had it right, they saw the change coming and were agile and innovative enough to adapt.
This is the challenge facing organizations today and for the next decade at least. AI, and chatbots, combined with the Cloud, will transform how we interact with everything. Enterprise systems will no longer be the province of back office professionals, and will absolutely need to be opened up to every single person in the organization. Curation and certification will not be possible. UX innovations and AI will go hand in hand, and will require Cloud vendors to provide the tools (via PaaS), and an open lane (no roadblocks) to allow their customers to take advantage of the massive organizational benefits this will create.
Getting your organization ready to thrive in this new reality will be the most important thing you can start doing today. To find out more, please contact us.
In 2016 AlphaGo was the first computer to defeat a world champion at the ancient Chinese game of Go. Fast forward to October 2017, and the latest iteration, called AlphaGo Zero, crushed the previous version, AlphaGo Master, by 100 games to zero. Thus, making it “arguably the strongest Go player in history”.
That the latest version of something beat the previous version isn’t the shocking part of all this. We’ve become used to things getting better and better. Version 4 of something should be better than version 3. Now, what makes this a fascinating story is how AlphaGo Zero was built, and how it became so powerful. And with that, a very important lesson can be learned for the practical implementation of AI in the Enterprise
To the casual observer, and many experts, one would imagine that AlphaGo Zero had more powerful processors, access to more data, and more time to “learn”. Not so. In fact, the opposite was true. AlphaGo Zero had less processors, was provided with “zero” data (hence the name), and had a tiny amount of time to learn.
Figure 1: Less is more
So, the big question is, how is this possible? There’s a very long answer to this question, but the short answer is that AlphaGo Zero was unencumbered with big data and was allowed to just think for itself. All it needed was the right algorithms.
The creator of AlphaGo Zero was a brilliant group called DeepMind (based out of the UK) that Google acquired for $500 million in 2014. Professor David Silver explains it succinctly:
“Algorithms matter much more than either computing or data available”
– Professor David Silver
This in itself is a breakthrough in AI, and massively impactful to not only future developments in AI, but also in the practical application of AI in organizations today. It also runs counter to the hype machine touted frequently, and should lead organizations to question the validity of being told over and over again, “implement AI, let it mine your data and learn, and in about a year you should start to see value from it”.
Advising people that implementing AI is a year-long process that would take lots of high-priced consultants to implement, with just the hope that it would work, was bad advice out of the gate. AlphaGo Zero has shown that there is a better way. A smarter way.
This whole story reminds us very much of the famous “Search war” that took place back in the late 90’s early 2000’s between Google and Yahoo (remember them)? Yahoo at the time had a massive lead in the Search ad revenue business. Only one problem: it was built using massively inefficient technology that required huge amounts of human interaction. Whereas Google built their search solution by implementing vastly better algorithms that allowed them to completely automate every process. Nobody needs a lesson in how this all turned out. Smart algorithms, automation, and scalable architecture always wins out in the end.
Which brings us to the original point of this blog: how can these lessons be applied to Chatbot implementations in the Enterprise? Let us count the ways…
Chatbots themselves are merely a UI. They are not “the brain”, they are a mechanism by which the user can communicate with the brain. Instead of clicking on links, now you can have a conversation with your Enterprise system.
So first, the neural network needs to be in place, and the paths through that network need to be defined. These paths are called processes. And the way to navigate through a process is via a conversation.
At IntraSee we have built, over the past decade, a way to turn your entire Enterprise into a neural map of processes that can be traversed via a browser. Now we have enabled the ability to traverse that same network via conversational AI. AKA Chatbot. The chatbot piece was relatively easy for us, the previous ten years of work was much harder 😊
There’s two ways to attack a problem:
A. Lots of people, and no clear plan
B. With smart algorithms, few people, technology automation, and a plan
Option A was how Yahoo tried to win the Search war against Google. Option B was how Google won. At IntraSee we believe that option B is the only tenable way organizations should attempt to implement a chatbot solution.
It is our belief that many vendors in the chatbot market will bring huge teams of consultants to “solve” the problem. These teams will spend years manually building out spaghetti code dialog flows that will be both unmaintainable and unworkable.
It is the IntraSee approach to automate every aspect of a chatbot implementation.
We believe that chatbot implementations should be short projects that provide rapid returns on investment. Increases in customer satisfaction will be immediate, support costs will drop, and organizational efficiency will occur within weeks of the implementation.
If you click to search, you don’t need to find the right version of Google to get what you want. Google doesn’t fail to return results and suggest that you try a different version of Google to get the right results. Your chatbot shouldn’t do that either.
It’s our belief that many vendors will try to push a multi-chatbot solution, where each chatbot handles its own “silo”. This reminds us of the early days of portals where organizations ended up with hundreds of portals and people had no clue which one to go to. Multiple chatbots would be equally disastrous.
Imagine someone trying to have a conversation with a chatbot where some of what they needed was in Taleo, some was in PeopleSoft, some was in Oracle HCM Cloud, and some was in Oracle’s Content & Experience Cloud. This should be handled by one chatbot that understands each system. You can’t start bouncing people back and forth between chatbots, with each chatbot saying, “sorry, I don’t know the answer to that. Talk to the other chatbot”.
That said, nobody can chatbot enable their entire Enterprise with one chatbot overnight. It will be an incremental process initially, and then will expand rapidly as successes are realized and the correct, scalable, chatbot infrastructure is put in place. But this is clearly the path we believe organizations need to tread. Even Google didn’t index the world overnight. But they did implement the concept of one search engine then used technology-automation and smarter algorithms to eventually make Google the one place everyone went when they needed to find anything. This should be your chatbot goal too. A chatbot that understands all “intents” within your organization, and can manage conversations across multiple Cloud and on-premise systems.
At IntraSee we know how to do this, and have built a scalable Enterprise-centric solution that will allow you to meet your organization’s goals at a price you can afford. And, more so, it is a solution that will automatically adapt to your changing infrastructure. Such that as you slowly migrate from on-premise solutions (like PeopleSoft) to Cloud hosted solutions (like Oracle HCM Cloud), the solution will adapt to the change, and thus protect your UX investment.
Ultimately, what AlphaGo Zero has taught the world is the importance of the “I” in AI. AI needs to be intelligent out of the box. Chatbot engines are frameworks that can be infused with intelligence from the get-go. That’s what we do at IntraSee. And this is what made AlphaGo Zero a winner.
Please contact us to find out more.
It’s been a great week at OpenWorld this year, and especially fascinating if, like us, you follow the latest technology trends. Because this year Oracle really nailed all the relevant buzzwords, and then some! AI, Chatbots, Blockchain, Cloud… this was the theme of the conference. Then Oracle took it to another level and also included a new partnership with Slack. Yes, Enterprise software is looking decidedly cool these days. And with it, Oracle sent a huge message to the market. That while many other vendors are doing aspects of what Oracle does: nobody does it all, other than Oracle. The sheer breadth of their product portfolio is something else. Now, all they have to do is show that their depth can match their breadth.
This is also a far cry from Workday, who recently announced their intent to open up their platform for developers. Given how far ahead of Workday Oracle is, it’s hard to imagine Dave Duffield’s company ever catching Oracle in this race. Workday’s one strength appears to be its HCM SaaS product, but Oracle appears to be getting stronger and stronger in this area too. You’d imagine that being a one-trick pony would eventually catch up to Workday, but we shall see.
As far as technology conferences go, this was a “drop the mic” week for Oracle. And here’s the highlights as we saw them:
Unlike IBM, Oracle doesn’t see AI as a standalone product looking for a purpose in life. Which is probably why they don’t have a catchy name for it (ex: Watson, Einstein, etc.). The Oracle vision is that AI is infused into their entire Cloud suite on a feature by feature basis. For example, AI will be used to allow recruiters to better match candidates with job openings. This is a very practical application of AI. At IntraSee we firmly believe that AI is best used to solve issues that are already known to be a problem in the Enterprise world, as well as a tool that can enable automation of what are currently highly manual tasks. In the technology world, it’s the pragmatic bird that gets the worm.
“We have the broadest suite of cloud applications — it’s not just CX, HR or ERP, but we have all these capabilities. We can provide AI and machine learning that bridges those applications, not just within those specific use cases.”
– Jack Berkowitz, VP of products and data science for Oracle’s Adaptive Intelligence program
Finally, Oracle enters the chatbot market with its own framework for building chatbot solutions. Granted, this is a very busy market that they have entered, but at the same time it was absolutely necessary for them to do this. The expectation is that individual application teams at Oracle will build chatbots that deal with their particular area of functionality. Which means they really needed their own chatbot framework to do this. And by creating a framework that their developers can use, they will also be opening up a framework that anyone else can use too – if they go the Oracle PaaS route for their development tools.
“I call this the next browser. This is just the natural way in how you converse.”
– Suhas Uliyar, Oracle vice president of bots, artificial intelligence and mobile
If the chatbot framework wasn’t enough to get the crowds excited, Oracle decided to pile on and announce a partnership with Slack. Now, the fact that Slack is used extensively at Oracle had something to do with this. But this was also a message to the market that Oracle is redefining itself as not just a Cloud company, but as a cool Cloud company. Being able to drop a chatbot into Slack will definitely be a huge plus for their chatbot initiatives. Good call Oracle.
“As you see all these large enterprise software companies looking at messaging as a major platform, they’re looking to partner with us first and foremost.”
– Brad Armstrong, Slack’s head of global business and corporate development
If you’re rolling out a chatbot framework (that requires APIs to function), then you’d better have a content management system that delivers APIs. And that’s exactly what Oracle did. Perfect timing indeed. Now we can configure a chatbot to not just allow you to take time off when you need it, but also let you know what the time off policy is for your region – by pulling up the policy document/HTML in CEC via the now delivered APIs. This is beyond exiting to us at IntraSee. And, by the way, if you’d like to see a demo of this, please let us know and we’d be glad to oblige any time.
“If you are using any kind of on-premise portal right now (ex: PeopleSoft Interaction Hub, Oracle WebCenter, etc.), then the Content & Experience Cloud is where you should be headed as part of your overall Cloud migration strategy.”
– Paul Isherwood, CEO at IntraSee
Having spent half of Monday night discussing blockchain uses in the Enterprise world (over steak and wine) it was great to see Oracle jump into this market too, and be an immediate player right out of the gate. Given the rampant security issues that seem to be occurring daily, it’s refreshing to see Oracle giving full backing to this technology.
“Larry [Ellison] is heavily focused on cybersecurity at all levels and Oracle’s [blockchain] service focuses in on how to deliver secure transactions.”
– Amit Zavery, senior vice president at Oracle Cloud
Many organizations have very special regulatory requirements that mean they can’t be in the Cloud. Plus, some people just feel nervous about not having their data on their physical premises. Because of that, Oracle has a very unique offering: the ability to install “the cloud” on an organization’s premise.
“We install these machines behind your firewall and attach them to your network, but they’re a subscription service just like in the public cloud. The best way to think about this is that it’s an extension of our public cloud that sits on your data center floor.”
– Larry Ellison
You thought driverless cars were cool, right? Well, now we have the world’s first “self-driving” database. Larry was super excited to announce the Oracle Database 18c’s self-patching and self-tuning capabilities. All powered by machine learning and designed to minimize human intervention and reduce security risks (presumably by patching itself really quickly!). If previously you didn’t think of databases as being cool, well, now they are!
“This is a big deal, by the way. No one else does this. This is the most important thing we’ve done in a long, long time.”
– Larry Ellison
In 2017 PeopleSoft may not be considered a buzzword anymore, but, like a classic ’71 Mustang, it has a fanbase that may never go away. And count us in on the crowd that has a deep affection for it. So, it was very gratifying to see that there were still many PeopleSoft sessions at OpenWorld, and that they were so well attended! Also, having sat through the roadmap session, it was nice to see that Oracle continues to invest in the PeopleSoft product line, and that many more functional enhancements are scheduled to be released in 2017 and 2018.
Figure 1: 1971 was a vintage year for the Mustang
“Don’t make the mistake of believing that because you are on PeopleSoft now, that you can’t use Chatbots and you can’t be in the Cloud. You can do both.”
– Paul Isherwood, CEO at IntraSee
Please contact us if you’d like to learn more.
Chatbots have been the talk of the town for the past year, and it’s become very apparent that their time has now come. That all said, there are already well-known horror stories of organizations that have wasted tens of millions of dollars attempting to implement AI solutions. At IntraSee we figured that now was the time to give the lowdown on where the market stands, and what we think people need to be aware of when implementing a chatbot solution in their organization. And in true IntraSee style, we’ll do this via our Q&A format.
A: There’s no doubt that the hype-train is running full steam with AI right now and at some point reality will settle in. But at the same time, there are elements of AI that are ready to be used now. The trick is to know what to use and how to use it. But we at IntraSee can firmly say that chatbots are the element of AI that is now market ready (for the most part).
Yes, not all chatbots are created equal, and it’s important that each organization picks the right chatbot for the right job. There are many vendors in the marketplace and some are much better than others.
A: Well, only if you’ve not implemented it properly. One thing that has become very apparent is that all the large consulting companies see chatbots as a new revenue stream. So, their focus is on staffing as many people as possible on these kinds of projects, while also setting expectations low with their clients.
The facts are that if a Chatbot is implemented correctly you will see value from day one. If your implementation partner can’t deliver on this, then maybe you need a new implementation partner.
A: If the vendor is a “body shop” then this is how they make their money. But this is a terrible way to tackle a chatbot implementation.
The golden rule is to start with a chatbot pilot. And this pilot should last no longer than 12 weeks. If you can’t prove the value of chatbots in twelve weeks in your organization, then it would be reckless to proceed with a full implementation. Which, by the way, should also take twelve weeks if done properly.
A: Correct. You’re the client, and this is what you should expect. Just find someone who can meet that requirement. If someone tells you it can’t be done, it probably just means it can’t be done by them.
At IntraSee we would be more than happy to assist you, and can definitely meet this requirement using our AI implementation methodology and product suite.
A: It can vary a lot for individual clients, but a good place to start for a pilot would be manager self-service transactions (ex: change supervisor, terminations, promotions, etc.). Search functionality can be very useful too, based on what your help desk is being asked about on a regular basis. Things like PTO balance, PTO policy, view paycheck, life change event information (marriage, birth, divorce, etc.) are subjects that can easily be tackled.
The ultimate goal should be that anything that can be done via web access for your larger demographics (ex: employees, managers, students, faculty) should be made available via chatbot. And that special focus should be made on things that are currently creating high volume with your internal help desks.
A: The obvious ones are duration (it’s really long), the other is resources (they are proposing lots and lots of consultants). The key to remember is that the majority of what occurs during the implementation should be automated. Which means you should never be starting from ground zero.
Hordes of consultants building spaghetti dialog flows will only result in unmaintainable systems that are constantly breaking and that ultimately will just need to be scrapped.
A: People will now be able to successfully complete tasks that they otherwise would have:
Research shows that chatbots are expected to save businesses $8 billion annually worldwide by 2022
Also, other than cost savings you will gain from a successful chatbot implementation, you will also win fans among a very large demographic that is already versed in the use of chatbots, and vastly prefers to “chat” via a messenger application than pick up the phone and call anyone. We are, of course, talking about millennials. That said, we have found almost universal delight from every demographic we have piloted this with. Not surprisingly, people prefer a more “human” way of interacting with systems. There’s a certain delight people get from being able to interact with a “robot” in a natural conversational style. And this “delight” will ultimately benefit your organization via greatly reduced support costs for all your internal and external systems.
A: Again, this isn’t the fault of the chatbot. It’s the fault of the implementer. Chatbots are really good at a number of things:
What chatbots need lots of help with is:
At IntraSee we understand what chatbots can do, and what they need help with. And we have created a single push button solution to solve for every requirement – out of the box! Because of that, we can accomplish in one day what would take anyone else over a year, and with an army of consultants.
Figure 1: Chatbot integrating with Enterprise HCM system
A: It does not matter at all. Your chatbot solution will be your new UX for all your systems, no matter what they are. Of course, over time those systems will change, but your chatbot solution will adapt to the change. It will become the most important thing you do for the next decade at least. And will add more value than anything else you’ve ever done.
“Conversational AI-first” will supersede ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ as the most important high-level imperative for the next 10 years”. Gartner Sept 2016
A: Yes, that’s exactly what we are saying. Plus, we believe that everything we do is “future-proofed”. Meaning that as the market changes our solution will automatically adapt to where AI is headed in the future without any additional rework.
We have created our implementation of chatbot technologies such that it can organically grow and adapt to market changes and client requirements. We believe in protecting the investment of our clients, by ensuring that every dollar (or Euro) you spend with us is the most productive you’ve ever spent.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have.
