Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup

Episode 012: Enterprise Automation with Conversational Messaging - HR & Supply Chain

September 24, 2021 Beerud Sheth and Srinivas Vijayaraghavan Season 2 Episode 12
Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup
Episode 012: Enterprise Automation with Conversational Messaging - HR & Supply Chain
Show Notes Transcript

In today’s episode of the Conversational Messaging Podcast, Gupshup’s Product and Strategy Team Senior Member, Adwit Sharma, joins Srini to discuss how conversational messaging makes company processes and communications seamless. Tune in and see what you’re missing by not automating your HR processes. 


Communicate More Naturally 

Because of the pandemic, many companies have switched to remote setups. While this brought many issues as employee communications can no longer happen face-to-face, there is a way for companies to still make communications seamless, easy, and natural. Adwit believes that many work-related issues, instead of being raised through complex processes (i.e. ticketing system) can be resolved through automation using common messaging channels such as Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram, Hangouts, etc. 

“We are improving usability as well as availability, using conversational automation without replacing anything that already helps and works for an organization.” - Adwit Sharma


Easier Company Processes

Automation is especially helpful for the Human Resources (HR) as it can make HR processes (i.e. hiring, onboarding) easier. Simple inquiries like scheduling an interview, sending out documents, all the way to setting up the company equipment, if tied to an automated messaging channel, can be a great help in reducing inconvenience not only from the HR officer’s perspective, but also the new employee’s. Automating company processes may also be helpful for employees wanting to file leaves, get payslips, and many others. 

“The repetitive queries that you get, they automatically go down fast. Because people are now reading your notifications.”  - Adwit Sharma


It’s Not Complicated

For Adwit, the beauty of automation and tying it to messaging channels lies with the fact that it’s not a complicated process for the companies at all. Once you select a vendor that would oversee the entire automation process, integration integration framework and engineering resources, business analysts, and a conversational design team are all provided. There’s also no need for employees and the company to heavily adjust with the new systems as automation is commonly tied with Teams, Slack, and WhatsApp, which people use on a day-to-day basis. 

“You don't have to expose people outside your company to too much technical complexity.” - Srinivas Vijayaraghavan


To know more about Conversational Messaging in Company Processes, listen to this episode.


Bio:

Adwit Sharma

Adwit Sharma is a conversational automation industry giant. He is currently a Senior Member of Gupshup’s Product and Strategy Team.

Srinivas Vijayaraghavan

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.


Resources:

Gupshup.io



00:01
Listen to insights on how conversational messaging is changing the way businesses and their customers engage. Join gupshup CEO Beerud and VP for marketing srini, and an array of guests for conversations about conversations. This is the gupshup conversational messaging podcast.
 
00:29
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the conversational messaging podcast we are deep into season two. And for those of you who are tuning in for the first time, in season one, we spoke a lot about what conversational messaging is and how it applies to different industries, verticals and different functions. In season two, we are going deeper into product innovation in the conversational messaging space and how products are actually making a difference. Two very specific use cases. So in past episodes, if you haven't had a chance to check it out, we've spoken about payments, like one click bill pay, we've spoken about online reputation management with social bots, we've spoken about Instagram, as a channel. And today we're going to speak about and most of the common thread in all of these conversations has been about how brands engage with customers. So we've focused on that customer part of the value chain. But today, we're going to focus on a different part of the value chain, which is what you might call us internal to our brand, which is about how our brand can engage better with the supply side and the distributor side, and also on the employee front with conversational messaging. And to talk to us about it. I want to welcome for the first time on the conversational messaging podcast with from CAPTCHA and AdWords is a senior member of our product and strategy team is working on a lot of cool innovations at gupshup. And this area is one of them. So AdWords, welcome to the show.
 
02:02
Thanks, Trini. Thanks for having me today.
 
02:05
Great, my pleasure. So we'll start off with what is the state of the art today when it comes to you know, how our company sort of deals with their suppliers or deals with distributors or even engages with the employees? Right? So can you just give us like a state of the art and how things function today? And how that can be fundamentally changed?
 
02:25
Sure, I think companies have come a long way from where they were 10 years ago. As far as internal facing software's are concerned, there are now large software's like workday, and PeopleSoft and all these other guys. And then on the ITSM side, there are the big ones like ServiceNow, JIRA, BMC, and all of these. Yeah, and these have kind of provided a quite a lot of structure to how they can communicate with each other internally. However, our inherent limitation of these large software's is, they still don't see instant messaging, or short form messaging like WhatsApp and Skype and teams and all these other channels as a viable option to invest their time, money and resources. However, when you look at a post-COVID world, employee engagement needs reimagining, right, because, right, a lot of companies have now become a remote first companies, a lot of companies are still not asking their employees to come to office. Correct. So however, it problems happen all the time, my laptop also doesn't work sometimes just because it doesn't want to. And I have to then either look for another area or, or probably call another colleague who can then call it and then they can call me there's so many things because if my laptop's not wanting, working, how do I raise a ticket. So that's where the innovation kind of is wide open or primed to be implemented, is adding new channels in a secure manner that can still talk to the established software like workdays and ServiceNow is of the world. However, the communication point is not just a browser or an app anymore. conversational automation can be brought in on in a controlled manner on channels like WhatsApp and Instagram and themes and Hangouts and slack etc.
 
04:34
Yeah, and I'm also thinking it's the same with the supply and distribution side of the house as well like if you're fmcg brand, for example, and you depend on suppliers for production and then you also have our distributor network. A lot of that world also is sort of very document heavy and manual today despite some infusion of IT systems So, talk to me a little bit about how that world operates as well.
 
05:03
Right, exactly. So if you're not an employee, and if you're a CPG, FMCG company, the only way you can talk to me is through either my ERP, or through my call center, right, which is a cost center for me also, because human resources are one of the most expensive resources in any process. Right? So if you're talking to me through an SAP, and if you're in a, tier three, four, city towns, etc. Mostly, you won't be comfortable doing that, because you won't probably have a good enough internet connection, a fast enough computer, right? At the most what you have is a cell phone and probably WhatsApp and some other social apps. So that's the limitation where this limitation is currently being solved through middlemen and distributors, who have their own business strategy who like to put bulk orders, so maybe the smaller orders, for example, if you're a paper company, how do you reach out photocopier sitting in front of a temple in Banaras? Correct? Correct. So that guy will talk to a distributor who will wait till he gets more orders and get better rates and stuff like so that's where a delay or loss of quality in the supply chain will happen. However, because of the whole conversational automation wave, ERP is like SAP have Hana as a layer. And Oracle has an ESB layer in between, which allow cloud-based or even on premise based API calls to ensure that we can take free text information and fill it in the fields inside these GRPs. So that's another area where like a distributed slash and mile vendor conversation should also or can also be moved to a conversational paradigm.
 
06:54
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting because the premise on which conversational messaging is picking up in the industry is also because you know, whether it is a customer or distributor or an employee, you're taking your brand, or your offering, or your service to where they already are. And they're already comfortable, which is most of them, and almost all of them are on some form of a messaging channel, right. And they're really comfortable talking, chatting with their friends, family forwarding, and all of that. So let's talk a little bit about how conversational technologies and conversational automation in this case, can bring in that difference. So we'll probably address these two segments, like we can maybe address the employee segment if you want first, and then we'll talk about the non employee segment like supplier or distributor persona. Sure. So why don't we talk a little bit about that?
 
07:46
Sure. So let's look at employee or controlled audience segment first, this audience, you know who they are, you know, what systems they use, and you know, where all these queries will come from, because the number of issues that can come up are finite. If your laptop not working, then there are only 10 types of issues that can happen, there is no 11th issue. And the other thing is, these issues are common across the world. If a laptop doesn't work, then there are globally only 10 things that can go wrong, just as an example. So the use case is very strong for automating internal processes. Because one, there are finite use cases. Second, these use cases have been already modeled into preset AI models, which can be plug and play now. And third, a lot of productivity actually happens on internal instant messaging apps like Teams and Slack, and Hangouts, etc. So emails and phone calls, may be the norm 10, five years ago, for internal collaboration, and specially either post-COVID world a lot, I can safely say, say 50 to 60% collaboration happens on instant messaging rather than emails now. So I mean, this is completely ripe for automation, because of the sad facts that finite use cases, captive audience and known technologies involved. Right. So it's easy and faster to automate these avenues.
 
09:19
Right. So can you walk me through how an employee will now experience let's say, let's take a remote employee, somebody who's working in a remote part of India, or how does that person experience the employer brand through conversation technologies as opposed to what she would have if she were in the office,
 
09:39
Right. So there are higher to retire cases, all cases between that also. So, right, I will start at hiring. So what if you want to set up an interview? Now, as an HR, they can either send you an email or there can be a WhatsApp based automation, where you receive notification on WhatsApp saying hey, we have have selected your profile, would you like to talk to us? If the candidate says yes, this automation layer can go directly into HR's calendar and find a suitable time slot and suggested to the candidate without actually the HR logging into their systems at any time, and that's available 24/7. So as a candidate, I can look at that message at 10pm any day and still be able to set up a interview at my convenience. So that's one second, then after a few rounds of interviews, maybe the HR needs some documents from you like bank card or salary slips or stuff like that. Those can be easily everybody knows how to upload the documents on WhatsApp. And these documents can securely and in an encrypted way, go back to your worldpay or PeopleSoft or whatever you're using is in HRMS. Okay. And also send out further alerts to other people who like legal team who will first verify these things, etc. Whatever the process is. So from a candidates perspective, I'm still talking to you on WhatsApp, while my data has traveled to three or four modules internally without actually anybody logging in and manually uploading anything. So that brings in first efficiencies, second availability. Second, we move on to what if this person has joined, what is she has joined? And she's waiting for her laptop and welcome kit. And I'm in companies give out lots of gifts in these days. Or if I've received it, but it's broken, something's not working. How do I tell the appropriate team if my laptop's not working, and it's my day one, or I don't know the password, or my VPN is not working? How do I tell people if I can't log in? So that's another way where I can either download Slack, or still go through WhatsApp and raise a ticket internally on ServiceNow, our BMC just by entering free text information, I don't have to select 123, I don't have to look for a field. And if I'm new, and the ServiceNow form is like a custom form, I would traditionally wait till somebody explains how to raise this ticket. But I would not have to wait for anybody to tell me how to write a message on WhatsApp or slack or whatever. So that's like an onboarding, help and issue kind of thing. Then there are other options like I am an employee, I need a pay slip. It's tax season. So I need my certificates. I need my form 16. What if my boss is on leave, but I need to leave? How does my boss get a notification if he's away from his laptop? So if I apply for a leave these WhatsApp is automations can also send out alerts or notifications to authority where they can also say yes or no in free text. And this becomes actual logical step in a backend system. Correct? We are improving usability as well as availability, using conversational automation without replacing anything that already helps and works for an organization.
 
12:57
Got it? And and what's the, if I can ask you like you mentioned, the the conversational automation piece. So what's behind the hood here, what's under the hood, talk to us a little bit about what's enabling all of this? I mean, it's not obviously as simple as just, you know, sending a message on WhatsApp and receiving it. But obviously, there is something deeper that the engine, the conversational AI engine is just talk to us a little bit about what's happening.
 
13:22
So to put it simply, there are three layers to this first layer is obviously which is apparent is the channel layer where all these channels like Slack and WhatsApp and Instagram and Teams, etc. They also agree and understand the need for automation. That's why they have API's available for such activities where they can connect to other systems just by calling an API framework. So then the bottommost layer is the channel API framework. On top of it, there is an NLP plus artificial intelligence plus machine learning framework, which is where NLP is used for understanding what you're saying, AI is to predict what you might mean and machine learning is to also learn from existing data sources like documents, policy, and other product level details, etc. Or even SOPs for solving if your laptop not working. So machine learning kind of learns from that. And all these three put together give you a valid or helpful answer, or or decide whether you want you you deserve a ticket or not. And the third layer on top of it is the analytics layer, which kind of reports on how many people want to talk to you on which channel and what kind of questions they're asking what is your most used resource at any time. So these three layers put together kind of make this possible. We can get into more technical details if that's
 
14:52
right. No, I think for the benefit of our audiences, if we can give them this conceptual clarity, I think that should be sufficient for now. So we saw how it works in the case of an internal audience. So what about an external audience like somebody who's on the supply side of things, also the distribution side,
 
15:09
right, so all three layers remain the same. What we do is we add another authentication layer just before the NLP layer. Before you start talking to me and asking questions, anybody who's outside the organization, but still a registered user should be able to authenticate themselves. So in that case, we can connect with active directories or CRMs, or single sign on services, etc. that organizations already used to authenticate their users, external users, we can use the same framework to also set up a multi factor authentication or SSO token based authentication, so that we are also sure who are we talking to and what information we're giving them. And also access control to whatever is you're not allowed to access etc. Right, the core platform remains the same, whoever you're talking to. The Associated technologies like authentication or payment will come and go based on the use cases we attack
 
16:11
understood. And if I'm a company that let's take an FMCG company, or a consumer electronics company, or e-commerce, the body made an investment in building these ERP systems, and brought like 1000s of vendors and suppliers onboard. How easy or difficult is it for them to add this conversational layer, if you will, on top of that? 
 
16:39
That's the beauty of this whole conversational automation industry. There is minimum dependence on existing infrastructure in terms of integration. When you select a vendor, for your conversation, automation journey, these are some of the points that all top vendors offer as part of their services, one integration framework and engineering resources, second, analytics resources, or business analysts for that matter, and a conversational design team, who will not only design how your conversations are, but also design, what are the points where this data needs to flow into other backend systems. So any conversational automation partner, any organization chooses, these three basic things should be part of the package. And thus reducing dependency and effort at the core infrastructure, who are anyways busy solving other larger issues understood.
 
17:39
But thanks so much for providing the perspective. I think, as an employee myself, and you know, having seen some of these processes, with with the external partners, and we've seen this with other parts of customer engagement as well, where we went through the, you know, websites, we went through the year of apps, we've gone through the be here as well. But I think adding this conversational edge to the existing infrastructure will sort of smooth in and make it easier for these different stakeholders to interact or improve their engagement with a brand, which is what we and we try to achieve with conversational messaging. So in conclusion, I think to our audience members, if you're a chief people officer, you're part of the people in the HR department, or to start thinking about how you can bring in conversational technologies in the way you engage with your employees today, especially in this post pandemic world where there is still a distributed workforce. And if you're someone who's working on, you know, the supply chain side of things, or the distribution side of things in any industry or any vertical, you can explore and start thinking about how you can just make it easier for a distributor to place an order, for example, Whatsapp and your bot can process that order for you while working with all the existing systems in the backend. And you don't have to expose people outside your company to too much of technical complexity.
 
19:08
There's another advantage here is during order placing process, I've seen it in my experience, also, that when you place an order, there are multiple phases, an order goes through. And every stage has a notification associated with it. However, those notifications typically come on SMS and email, who's read and open rates have been steadily declining all across the globe. So a lot of issues are about, Hey, I didn't get a notification. And somebody will have to tell you that why don't you check your spam folder, or we send it on SMS? Didn't you read it? Whereas you look at slack and WhatsApp and all these other channels read rates are above 95% across the globe. So the repetitive queries that you get about, Hey, I didn't get a notification, they automatically go down fast. Because people are now reading your notifications. You don't have to solve that problem.
 
19:58
Correct. Well, that's it Great point. And I think we are trying to, we're trying to make the brand, adapt to the way people want to be notified, for instance, where people already are like when we started at the beginning of the episode, so you are more likely to check a notification that you get on WhatsApp versus yet another email that you receive in your inbox, for instance. So I think this is a great example of where integrating conversational technology, especially on a messaging channel that's already being used and popular, can really, really transform your engagement not only with your customers, but also with your employees, and with your suppliers and partners. So on that note, thank you for joining us today, I'm sure that we'll have more opportunities to talk as you build out the core technology that is driving all of this. Any concluding thoughts before we wrap up the episode?
 
20:56
Yes, so I'm full of ideas. So I just wanted to add another idea here is vendor onboarding is a pain, because it requires a lot of form filling, a lot of legal and back and forth, and a lot of documentation. So that is something that every vendor has a dedicated person to talk to all these suppliers, and this person definitely has a WhatsApp or Slack channel or slack identity. So we are able to use machine learning to do KYC is also in real time on these channels. So that the overhead on legal team and procurement teams and vendor onboarding teams are also reduced. That's another really low lying fruit that organizations should look
 
21:40
at. That's a great idea again, and for any listeners out there who might want to explore some of these thoughts. And you might be having some similar issues in your organization. So admit, this is available on LinkedIn, and you can reach out to him or you can reach out to capture, and we will we'll set it up for you. So that's all we have time for on this episode. So I just want to thank all of you all of our listeners for tuning in. Once again, if you've not had a chance to please do check out our previous episodes from season two, where we cover more such cool product innovations in the area of conversational messaging. And we'll be back next week with yet another product innovation. Thanks for you. Thank you for joining