With the growth of new technologies, this conversation is rapidly moving into the topic of artificial intelligence and what the workplace of the future will look like. It’s perhaps easier to drive innovation in a manufacturing process, where you can develop an electronic solution or robot to speed up the production line. But what about in an office environment? How can you increase productivity and effectively measure that?

A lot has been written recently about the unstoppable march of the machine and I am a big fan of the opportunities this will open up for us all. Everything we see today convinces me that the outcomes will be overwhelmingly positive.

41% of European employees are seeking a reduction in repetitive tasks and more than a third (36%) call for the automation of admin tasks

These were the findings from a piece of Ricoh-commissioned research, where we spoke to 3,500 employees on the topic of a digital workplace. It shows there is a real hunger to embrace new technology and integrate it better into everyday working practices.

Technology can put employees at the centre of an organisation, enabling and empowering them to do more.

When looking at AI through this lens, you can see some of the real-life business benefits. Here are three areas where I see a form of AI making a big impact in the workplace.

1. The AI-powered customer contact centre

One key advantage the human brain still has over machines is empathy. That’s why humans will always have the most crucial role when it comes to interacting with customers.

However, we can use the machine to better equip our customer service team. The advantages it brings to the processing of massive amounts of data, or searching records immediately are obvious and great. A decision-making process (which mimics human intelligence) means incoming calls can be prioritised and a customer directed to where they need to go without the annoying sequence of “press 1 for…”.

In an inbound call centre, the machine processes the initial customer phone call (or email) and can ascertain where the customer needs to be referred to, thereby speeding up the process of speaking to a service agent. What if you arrive at the reception desk of a company and are greeted by a robot? This doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea anymore as the field of robotics is becoming more advanced every day..

2. The AI chatbot salesman

Chatbots have already been making waves in the customer service spheres, but what about sales?

If you’re not familiar with the term, chatbots mimic human conversations through websites and social media platforms. Think of the little pop-up on your screen that appears when you are booking a holiday that says: “Hi, I’m Charlie, I see you have been here for a while. How can I help?”. Charlie is sadly not a person. A handful of brands are experimenting with how they can be used to handle non-urgent customer queries.

In consumer spheres, a useful application could be something as simple as ordering a pizza through a chat service and having it delivered to your door.

Staples is using machine learning to automate its ordering process for customers, teaching an army of chatbots to learn from the conversations it has with its customers. If the request is too complex, the system will pass it on to a human.

What’s the value in doing this? You free up your sales team to focus on more complex problems and add greater value to your customer.

3. The AI collaboration aid

Collaborative workforces sit at the heart of successful businesses. As interactions get more complex, keeping an effective paper trail and organising workflows get increasingly more difficult. We work in an ever-growing global world, where the reliance on technology to hold meetings and collaborate in shared workspaces is paramount.

This is where AI can come in to do the heavy lifting, making that experience seamless for all users, enabling them to more be productive.

Interactive whiteboards are a great example of this in action. Cognitively-enabled and highly-interactive, it uses IBM’s Watson intelligence to be an active meeting participant. Real-time analytics help guide discussions so teams can work smarter by making faster, better and more informed decisions.

Use of these AI applications are a way of empowering digital workplaces. Technology should be seen as a tool to help us, not hold us back, or replace us.

Want to learn more about workplace transformation? Fill out the form to the right to download your copy of our Decision Maker’s Guide to Workplace Transformation.

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What is the General Data protection Regulation? (GDPR)

GDPR, which comes into effect on 25 May 2018, is designed to unify data privacy requirements across the European Union (EU). If you market to or process the information of EU Data Subjects (customers, end users and employees), you need to be ready to address these new requirements.

A brief overview of GDPR

In an increasingly data-driven world, the aim of GDPR is to protect all EU citizens from privacy and data breaches. Over the last few years, some of the largest global companies have disclosed security breaches, including Yahoo and Uber. The new regulation is great news for consumers but presents a complex challenge for businesses.

One of the biggest changes is to the jurisdiction of GDPR. It affects every company – regardless of size – that processes personal data of ‘Data Subjects’ residing in the EU, no matter where the company is located.

The EUGDPR.org website provides an easily-digestible overview of the main changes, but in summary:

• Businesses must have explicit consent to use a wide variety of data
• It is now a legal requirement for organisations to hire a data protection officer if business processes require the storage and manipulation of certain categories of data
• ‘Privacy by Design’ is now becoming part of the official legal requirement, which states that data protection must be included from the onset of system design. This includes pseudonymisation techniques, so that data cannot be attributed to a specific data subject, and data minimisation

GDPR also includes some onerous provisions to promote accountability and governance, meaning it is even more important for organisations to demonstrate compliance. Essentially you must:

• Implement a clear governance process with regards to the type of data and what data is managed, processed, stored, retained and deleted
• Maintain documentation, such as data protection manuals and personal data inventories
• Conduct data protection impact assessments
• Deploy ‘Privacy by Design’ to ensure that privacy is embedded into any new process or product that is deployed

Are you suffering from compliance fatigue?

I worry that for many organisations, especially for SMBs, the constant need to stay on top of new compliance and regulations could lead to fatigue in dealing with the issues.

Perhaps it feels like a mountain to climb and it would be easier to just sit tight and hope everything will be OK. Well, this time, it won’t. There are some fairly hefty penalties for non-compliance, which could prove financially crippling for many businesses (up to €20 million or 4% of an organisation’s total worldwide annual turnover in the previous year).

It’s not too late to act

If your existing data processes are not up to scratch, you still have time to put the right infrastructure in place. Despite moving to online modes of delivery, such as self-service portals, virtual advisors and chatbots, which reduces the amount of paper, it is still just not possible to work in a paperless office.

Physical documents are pervasive and there are still cultural and behavioural attachments to the portability, annotation and longevity of paper as a medium.

But how can you deal with physical documents in a safe and secure way, while still meeting the new regulations?

From our experience, the three main reasons our customers approach us to digitise paper processes are to:

• Accelerate – become quicker at what they do
• Increase productivity
• Reduce costs

Now, I would also include here:

• Be compliant

With the power to digitise existing paper processes and capture, process, store and retain this data electronically from the outset, you can be GDPR compliant and reap significant operational benefits.

Take a look at the article ‘GDPR and data cleansing: the hidden threat that most of our clients overlook’ to gain a better understanding of what secure document scanning and archiving means. If you’d like to discover more about digital transformation, we recently released an infographic looking at the future of a technology-led workplace. You might be surprised by the number of people who are open to digital innovation.

Embrace digitalisation for a safe and secure future

Or perhaps you could turn this statement around and embrace GDPR as a means to get your business processes in shape for the future. Either way you look at it, you can’t sit and do nothing. What will you do next? After all, why just survive when you can thrive in a digital environment.

If you would like to learn more about securing information and ensuring compliance with new legislation, just fill out the form to the right to download your copy of our Security Solutions report.

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