Alexa meets Wanda – the future of enterprise computing

The power of voice controlled intelligence systems like Alexa is no longer reserved for the home. We have enhanced Alexa with enterprise skills allowing for a seamless integration between Alexa and our Digital Assistant, Wanda. The video below presented by myself and Thomas Staven from Unit4’s Innovation Labs team, demonstrates what happened when Wanda met Alexa for the first time, and what it means for enterprise computing in the future.

In this case, we take the example of a company running multiple projects. Through Alexa, I was easily able to find out project status down to the level of detail in the Unit4 system. Just a few years ago, accessing that kind of information at all might have been difficult for a project manager. We’ve certainly come a long way.

And this is just the beginning. This ability to bring natural language controls to any app is a massive game changer for enterprise computing. Great that we can use this for booking travel or claiming expenses for example, but more crucially the ability to ask questions and follow-up in the way you’d have a normal conversation is incredibly powerful.

For the first time, speech recognition available through applications like Alexa gives us the ability to build conversational applications that business customers can and want to use every day. Cloud and the move to platforms like Amazon and Microsoft has opened up a new world of technology to organizations. They can take advantage of new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence very easily to the benefits of their people and their customers – finally enterprise technology is working for the users and not the other way around.

Thomas and I provide just a glimpse of what will be possible in the enterprise in the not so distant future and we had a lot of fun doing it.