Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

The immeasurable amount of available data, assisted by the growing analytical technology, has been the driving force behind the development of cognitive systems in the market today.

The general public and even businesses have already tapped into the AI experience as a form of communication in performing simple tasks in their daily activities. So much so, as reported in a recent Gartner report, people will have more conversations with AI enabled bots than with their spouses by 2020.

That revelation isn’t too surprising to many though, considering devices like Google Home, Amazon’s Echo, IBM’s Watson, Siri or Cortana that have already become household names when it comes to routines. Parts of conversations that revolve around questions of a trivial nature, or future plans, will now be reasoned and discussed with an AI. The report further adds that 30% of browsing will be done via screenless interface come 2020.

There have also been marked advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Generation (NLG) which are giving AI’s the human element in the way they interact and respond, but with AI accuracy.

These advances have also affected the business world. More and more consumers demand quick and easy solutions, brought on by the big data revolution, pushing businesses into deciphering large complex data sets and to finding ways of simplifying it so its easily understood. The days of having to build data warehouses, modelling, schemas, indexes, which is really the opposite of agility and self-service for business users, are being numbered.

Sisense is one such company that have a solution to this issue. They are using the already available AI technology to do the work of data warehouses. It simplifies the vast amounts of data that wont normally be understandable and turns it into easily usable and readable data.

Their solution incorporates AI-powered bot technology allowing users to ask complex questions through Amazon’s Alexa AI that runs on voice controlled Echo. The Sisense Bot also functions by interacting through text using Skype, Facebook Messenger and Slack, allowing users to ask business pertinent questions such as most sales generated, and from which location. It can be supported by BI tools and display charts and graphs to back up its answers.

CEO at Sisense, Amir Orad says that this type of technology will be essential in the workplace in coming years. He adds that though solutions for simple data is readily available, the time and effort it takes to derive the necessary information for complex data is counter productive.

These types of frameworks (such as with Sisense Bots) are looking not only at how to answer questions posed to them, but also at being proactive in suggesting best practices. Such as in situations when businesses suddenly find a spike in customer visits, or sales increase in different parts of the country, the bot will be in a position to suggest intelligent steps that can be taken to meet demands where it’s needed, and in real-time.

The idea of democratizing data so that it is made available to as many people as possible and not just data scientists, will eventually unlock the true potential of data analytics. Companies such as Sisense that develop technologies with these types of frameworks, bring us just that much closer to realizing the potential of big data analytics in our everyday lives.

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