2020 has been a year like no other, with organisations facing unprecedented challenges and changes to the way they operate. These challenges have accelerated the pace of Digital Transformation, as organisations seek ways to streamline their processes to deliver efficiencies but also to support an increasingly remote workforce.
It is this shift to remote working, which has been one of the most significant catalysts in accelerating transformation projects, as organisations look to digitize processes and provide employees with easier ways working.
A recent survey conducted by Humley, found that 58% of UK employees would like to remain working from home some of the time beyond the pandemic and 31% would like to remain working remotely all the time. With such big demand for organisations to continue to support remote working in the future, CIOs and Technology experts now need to identify long term solutions to enable this.
Remote working – Driving the Change
Many organisations have already instigated processes and technology solutions to enable remote working. However, these have presented challenges and, in many cases, proven not to be sustainable in the longer term.
Within the same survey some of the top issues reported by employees when working from home were a lack of connectivity with their team and technology. With 13% reporting that they were struggling to connect or find the information that they needed to perform their role, leading to low productivity, employee motivation and in some instances creating compliance issues.
Intelligent Automation Could offer a Solution
Intelligent Automation is nothing new and has been on the CIO agenda for some time, but typically it has been reserved for back end processes such document processing and data entry. However, Intelligent Automation applications such as Conversational AI Assistants could be deployed within HR, IT and help desk environments to support remote workforces more effectively. Not only delivering automation to employee communications and tasks but enabling all information to be accessible from one location. Delivering efficiencies and significant time savings across end to end employee processes.
Provide Employees with Instant Access to Information
In traditional physical workplace environments, it is easy and common for employees to ask questions and get the information they need in face to face interactions, but when working from home this becomes more difficult and time consuming – especially when the limitations of shared support desks and remote employee interactions are considered.
Employees are then forced to either navigate complex systems such as HR or Sales platforms, or even worse are reluctant to ask the questions in the first place – leading to misinformation and inhibiting productivity. Therefore, providing employees with the ability to effectively ‘self-serve’ whenever and wherever they are, will be key in ensuring employees remain connected.
Conversational Assistants enable employees to find the information they require and automate tasks 24/7 within a conversational interface. Minimizing the need to navigate complex systems and burdening People Teams with a multitude of repetitive emails and tasks. Types of communications HR Teams typically receive include, but are not limited to annual leave requests, payroll updates, policy information and even meeting room booking and timesheet updates.
Crucially, platforms such as Humley’s Conversational Assistant, can integrate with a wide variety of business systems from HRIS to Payroll and CRM. Using secure user logins, the platform can access information stored within these systems to provide personalised and specific information unique to that request. Additionally, the platform can also automatically ingest employee handbooks, FAQ’s, and guides, ensuring employee engagement, productivity, and compliance.
Focus Employees on More Rewarding and Strategic Tasks
Where Conversational AI Assistants differ from traditional chat bots, is their ability to automate tasks. Employees can perform tasks such as booking holiday, checking out equipment or requesting meetings or more perform more complex processes such as requesting travel within the platform. Integrate with other Intelligent Automation technology such as RPA, to interact with line of business systems and trigger further activity such as approval emails.
The ability for these assistants to integrate with other Intelligent Automation technologies, means efficiencies are extended to end to end processes leading to increased employee productivity through reducing repetitive tasks and freeing them up to focus on more strategic and critical business tasks.
With Intelligent Automation technologies, such as Conversational AI and RPA, organisations can provide employees with the support that they need as well as enabling technology leaders to implement long term solutions that generate demonstrable ROI and success.
If you are interested in finding out more about Conversational AI and how to get started with your Digital Transformation project, contact us today.