As we look back at 2018, two main themes standout from our various developments and technology innovations. First of all, we are thrilled that Unvired catalyzed the adoption of Chatbots in the Enterprise and second is the huge progress made in digitizing the enterprise (forms, IoT etc.) for our customers. Other than the key drivers, we also saw fairly wide adoption of hybrid mobile apps for the Enterprise. Surprisingly quite a few Unvired customers are using these hybrid apps on Android, iOS and Windows Tablet (Cordova based apps that run on all of them). Maybe Windows tablet time in the enterprise has arrived? Delving into more details:
Chatbots:
ChymeBot moved deeper into the enterprise and the user’s psyche. A bunch of customers deployed and we also had a major implementation with the Rugby games in Australia sponsored by Carlton United Breweries. To know more about that read the press release and our customer blog. So what did we work on in Chyme?
New Releases with Enhanced NLP and AI along with several successful customer chatbot deployments reiterated Unvired’s Chyme Bots Platform leadership in the market. Below are some of our significant achievements:
1. Enhanced Natural Language Processing (NLP): We have added the Open Source Rasa stack for Natural Language Understanding to enhance the contextual conversational Chatbots we build using Chyme. We also support complete conversation modeling using the Chyme Conversation Builder and training and deploying to Rasa online. Given that Rasa is based on Tensorflow, the NLP uses the conversation modeled to manage the initial conversations and learns the rest.
2. Incorporated Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: We made the Chyme Bots Platform smarter by incorporating open source AI and ML that makes the conversations of Chatbots more contextual and intelligent. Standard Chyme features here include Sentiment Analysis and optionally User and usage patterns etc. Additionally, our SDKs allow bots to hook up to custom ML models to mine the rich data that enterprise users are working on. Each customer implementation (cloud or on-premise) runs in a separate silo for both data and ML and is completely secure and sensitive data is protected. Additionally, no data is sent to external cloud providers and data is completely private to the customers’ team.
3. Voice: Google Assistant has been the one our customers have liked. We have deployed a couple of voice assistants for our customers who are using the Google Assistant on Android phones to access enterprise data via voice.
4. Global languages supported: We increased our support for many languages beyond English, and Russian and Greek merit a special mention as we have customer deployments in these languages.
5. Developer enhancements: We added many tools to make it easy for developers to build Chatbots using Chyme and to extend our Standard Chatbots for IT Help Desk (ServiceNow), SAP, Procurement, HR, and QnA (FAQs). This is a continuous improvement cycle and we are making large investments into this area in 2019 also. Expect many more enhancements and features around ease of development here.
Overall 2018 was really the year when customers conducted POCs to build the Business Case for Chatbots along with a few adventurous rollouts. The success of 2018 has emboldened customers and in 2019, we are finding that they are ready to migrate these Chatbots to Production. We couldn’t be more excited about this.
Digitization:
At Unvired, we love working with customers to realize their digital vision and goals. 2018 was no different and we implemented a number of projects. What we did see different was the number of companies wanting to go digital with data collection in the form of filling forms, inspecting equipment, onboarding employees etc. Also striking was the need for customers to access these from mobile with offline capability and online via a browser. The distinction in digital on modes of access is disappearing and companies just want all forms of access for all apps!
2019 is going to see Unvired makes investments in enhancing and growing our suite of Apps for digitization. Specifically, we will be adding to our digital forms suite of apps.
Analyst Recognition: Among analysts, Gartner and 451 Research recognized our achievements, especially the proof points we had with Customer Case studies.
New Alliances: We built new alliances with System Integrators in the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Middle East, Australia, and other geographies. We also built partnerships with technology vendors.
Customer Deployments: We deployed Chatbots for customers in the US, Australia, New Zealand, S. Africa, and pan-Africa. The Use Cases were varied including Marketing, Sales, IT Help Desk, Procurement, Claims Management, and HR. The industry verticals were Beverages, Media, Insurance, and Utilities. This is a blog in itself.
We would love to hear from you what you would like us to focus on in 2019 so that we can continue to enhance the Chyme Bots platform and create innovative disruption in how humans interact with systems. Write to us at sales@unvired.io and let us have a human to human conversation. The chatbot conversation will follow.