AI, Automation Poised to Make Big Impact on Mobility, Remote Work

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are speeding up the process of automation and support for mobile and remote workers, freeing skilled workers from routine tasks like setting up instances and on-boarding users to concentrate on more value-added activities, such as custom coding, tighter integration between cloud platforms, and more bulletproof APIs and UXs.

A recent Mobi (acquired in December by Tangoe) mobility landscape survey of 100 US IT decision makers at companies with at least 5,000 employees found that 88 percent are either deploying or planning AI-driven automation initiatives, with 75 percent of those underway already seeing return son their investments.

Tangoe’s Josh Garrett

“One of the biggest takeaways from this survey is that IT decision makers understand the enterprise mobility landscape is changing,” said Josh Garrett, president, MMS at Tangoe, which enables enterprises to centralize, comprehend and control their connected devices. “AI and 5G are no longer just futuristic concepts — they’re taking shape in businesses today and changing how we work. What businesses now need to focus on is how to manage an evolving mobile ecosystem.”

For example, Mexico-based MejorTrato, a financial products comparison website, has 34 remote employees across Latin America involved in customer service who spend two-thirds of their time reading client questions, finding the answers and replying. Today, AI using TensorFlow automates this task and stores the information in an internal database. Now employees have more time to contact important clients and learn what new services the company can develop and grow, noted Cristian Rennella, CEO and co-founder of MejorTrato.

“AI is helping with already asked questions, so we can invest more time to answer questions that we have never seen before,” Rennella says. “And only humans can do the new ones. In the future, this will help AI because we upload those new answers to the database.”

On-Boarding, Churn Reduction

One of the key challenges for companies when it comes to remote workers is speeding the on-boarding process and reducing employee churn. Fortunately, there are several ways that AI, automation and bots can help.

Genesys’ Graeme Provan

“The on-boarding process can be faster and simpler using AI and robotic process automation to help with learning and development,” said Graeme Provan, global director of business automation, Genesys, provider of omnichannel customer experience and contact-center solutions. “AI-powered bots can also see repetitive actions, learn the employees’ workflow, determine which actions are taking the longest time to do and find where there’s significant business benefit in automating those actions.”

For example, when AI is purposefully utilized by an employee, the company can have the bot walk the employee through actions in “teach me” mode or even automate the entire activity.

“This is powerful because remote employees use this capability to learn how to perform tasks while on the job,” Provan says. “And the enterprise can centrally monitor or manage how the bots are used.”

Advanced automation tools can also …