Cisco banks on AI-based workplace future
Meetings targeted with new platform
Artificial intelligence (AI), digital assistants, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) will play a significant role in the future workplace, allowing employees new user experiences and more productivity in team collaboration.
These emerging technologies also help organisations to communicate with their customers more efficiently and increase sales revenue.
“For workers, meetings are the most tense and time-consuming sessions, but innovative technologies will enable stakeholders to have new experiences at meetings, allowing collaborative work efficiently,” said Sandeep Mehra, managing director for collaboration sales at Cisco Systems.
He said Cisco makes affordable, open and simple usage a part of its collaborative platform serving the changing work environment, where mobile has become a major tool and multi-generational workers can work together.
Workspaces will be not limited to offices due to increasing numbers of mobile workers, and by 2020, more than 60% of employees will considered mobile workers due to the increasing cost of real estate.
Generations X, Y and millennial workers are expected to account for 60% of total knowledge workers.
New innovative features in the Webex platform’s voice, video and chat communication and collaboration tools enable new abilities for user interfaces. Users can command and control the meeting and collaboration tools with voice recognition technology.
By just saying “start meeting”, the software will start the meeting session. Users can scan a QR code to call the application and start to operate automatically.
Machine learning enables the system to call the right person/co-workers.
Cisco says AI will be more powerful in the meeting room under the company’s 10-year roadmap. Right now, people can start to talk or use the voice command in conference rooms.
Ultimately, the system will have AI team members by inviting special knowledge workers to join in meeting sessions automatically without commands and record the meeting session automatically.
According to Cisco’s research, 95% of white-collar workers of 2,270 surveyed say “bring it on” to the idea of having AI assist them with basic meeting mechanics and 57% said AI would increase productivity.
In the near future, new meeting-focused assistants will soon work in the background, learning how teams form and work together, Cisco says.
This type of technology is still largely experimental, but it appears like people are ready for it, if security and privacy issues are handled properly.
VR also offers new ways for people to be present within the same room, regardless of distance. With the Cisco WebEx in VR app, available in the Oculus store, users can grab, open, share and present files by using hand gestures to flip pages, interact with 3D objects and make presentations to team members.
AR allows users to add objects to the digital meeting room environment with other users, such as complex architecture.
Mr Mehra said new technologies will enable employees to increase productivity by 30-40%. Cisco estimates that 90% of knowledge workers’ time is spent in the meeting, on messaging and phones.
“We estimate the collaboration tools enable people to save cost of communication at least US$453 million [14.5 billion baht] per year,” said Mr Mehra.
Vatsun Thirapatarapong, managing director of Cisco in Thailand and Indochina said the Webex platform can be used for customer service by embracing chatbots to communicate with customers.
Cisco has integrated its third-party chatbot with communication channels commonly used by consumers — Facebook Messenger and Line.
AI-induced automation will also optimise the use of live agents, allowing them to resolve problems faster, require less time to handle routine inquiries, and provide a better customer experience.
“Businesses can even use vocal requests to ask digital assistants to analyse how well customers agent work and the results will show up automatically,” he said.
Mr Vatsun said banks, healthcare, education are among the top sectors embracing these new collaboration and communication tools.
Banks can use robotic advisory as sale tools in wealth management services and even use Robotic Process Automation to automate procurement, reducing human error.
“We are opening Thai developers to our DevNetwork to bring new applications to integrate in to the platform,” he said.
Cisco’s Webex has had 6 billion meeting minutes per month globally, 130 million monthly active users and 1.5 million devices in meeting rooms. In Asia, there are 50,000 customers.
Innovative technologies will enable stakeholders to have new experiences at meetings. SANDEEP MEHRA Managing director for collaboration sales, Cisco Systems