Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 10 | Page 99

Today, AI can accelerate the entire process further to the point where in some cases, no interaction with a human is required at all. Rather than relying on engineers, AI chatbots can assess what the problem is by asking questions and then offer solutions that can be carried out by the employee – which could be as simple as pointing them to a self-help resource or knowledge-base article with the answer in.

An AI chatbot in this instance empowers users to resolve the problem themselves – which can be much faster than having to work through the IT department. Where issues persist or are more complicated, the AI chatbot can escalate the issue to the IT team to send out an engineer. AI chatbots have a further major advantage over traditional IT support – they are available 24 / 7, meaning help is on hand even outside traditional office hours. Moreover, IT is not the only areas of the business where AI chatbots can help.

Modernising human resources

Modern businesses are frequently global and diverse, meaning employees are scattered all over the world. Being spread across different regions does introduce challenges in achieving a holistic HR approach – due to differing policies, processes, regulations and systems. No two companies are alike; thus, employees have many questions and HR staff have a lot of their time tied up in answering them. This challenge can be exacerbated when an organisation has offices around the globe which frequently use different policies in each region. The complexity grows when you add in questions about holidays, grievances and pension plans – among many other topics – from potentially thousands of employees.

In the past, any enquiry had to be dealt with by a human, taking up valuable time for both the employee asking the question and the person trying to respond. Even the simple act of finding out how many days holiday someone has left can result in multiple emails sent across an organisation. AI chatbots can now take a lot of the pressure away from HR departments by answering questions about policies, or even telling employees how many days holiday they have left and helping to book it. This process is much faster than a human dealing with each request, meaning HR teams can focus on important issues such as recruitment, updating policies and employee training.

Facilities empowerment

In some ways, the facilities department are doing their job best when no one knows they are there, but the truth is that most employees will run into problems at some point or another. When we think about how facilities services could be delivered more effectively with

Mark Flexman, DXC Fruition Practice Lead, DXC Technology

the help of AI, our thoughts might drift to autonomous robots that can turn up and carry out maintenance by themselves.

Though we might still be a few years from that reality, AI chatbots can already help to organise repairs – whether it’ s getting maintenance teams to come and fix an AC system or replace a lightbulb. In addition, they can also help employees to request new IT or other equipment such as POS terminals, as required and help to get these items approved with minimal email traffic. In addition, AI systems create a lot of data which can then be analysed to spot trends – for instance recognising when downtime occurs and amending maintenance schedules to minimise these occurrences.

Tangible benefits

The first and key benefit that most businesses will be interested in are the potential financial savings made possible through AI chatbots. Streamlined processes can save vast amounts of time, for both those accessing and those delivering internal services. So clearly, these benefits can’ t be ignored, but they aren’ t the only reasons businesses should be improving internal services. The fact is that doing so will increase the usage of available resources and increase employee satisfaction, boosting productivity even further in the long term. • www. intelligentcio. com INTELLIGENTCIO

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