Bots: The Changing Face of Enterprise Applications€¦ · productivity during the workday is...

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Bots: The Changing Face of Enterprise Applications

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Bots: The Changing Face of Enterprise Applications How bots can increase efficiency within the pharmaceutical industry

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Seven things CIOs should know about virtual assistants

Pharmaceutical companies – whether they focus on marketing, research and development, or production

and manufacturing – rely on robust software systems to accomplish their business objectives. These

enterprise systems, including Salesforce, SAP ERP, Veeva CRM, and others, are essential. But it is no secret

that many employees believe enterprise tools sometimes deter them from getting work done. There are too

many communication and collaboration options – and none feel quite as simple to use as the tech options

that ease our personal lives.

The number of applications an employee uses, whether pharmaceutical or otherwise, has increased

to as many as 30 a day, according to research from SkyHigh Networks. As that number increases,

productivity during the workday is diminishing. Email, instant messaging (IM), file-sharing services, online-

meeting software, human resources apps, news-gathering services – you name it, and chances are

toggling between these systems has your efficiency running in ankle weights. With today’s fast-paced

pharmaceutical environment, you need your operations in full stride.

That’s why software companies and enterprise application architects have spent much of the past two

decades attempting to simplify the application paradigm for the life sciences, including pharmaceutical

companies.

The evolution of enterprise applications

Two decades ago, enterprise apps were monolithic, client-server applications which ran in an on-premises

data center and could only be accessed through desktop computers inside the network firewall. Many

companies in the pharmaceutical industry still use legacy systems with client-server architectures.

The trend going forward, however, is to use applications that run partially or entirely in the cloud. Cloud-

based services interoperate with other services through application program interfaces (APIs), and

allow for anywhere, any-device access. Big monolithic applications have transitioned to microservices

architectures, enabling each feature of an application to be optimized independently. Old features can

be upgraded and new features introduced without a multi-month, high-stakes, all-or-nothing test-and-

release cycle. The development risk is lower, and the potential gains are higher – much higher.

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Software developers continue to improve application user interface (UI) design. Many have developed

mobile apps to accompany larger software suites to provide quicker execution of specific tasks. For

example, within the pharmaceutical industry, customer relationship management (CRM) providers such as

Veeva have made their CRM and closed-loop marketing (CLM) solutions available as mobile apps. Field

staff, such as pharmaceutical sales reps, can review customer insights and data, manage orders, and

monitor inventory using these apps on their mobile devices.

The evolution of the past five to ten years helped make progress toward eliminating location dependency,

simplifying workflows, and enhancing user experiences. This is still a far reach from the full functionality

that the industry needs. The fact is, pharmaceutical company employees still struggle to achieve the fluid

functionality they need to perform their jobs.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Transforming the user interface (UI) with bots

Today, the average user thinks of an application, such as Salesforce or Veeva, as what they see when they

log in or the UI. That’s about to change. Since most apps support microservices and APIs, the UI can now

be detached from its information database.

What does that mean in plain English? The content stored within the app can become “headless,” and

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transition to a variety of UIs instead of being permanently attached to one. Users will no longer be

restricted to logging in to a single, traditional web or mobile UI to perform tasks for that one application.

These nomadic apps with multiple interfaces are called bots, and users can communicate with them just

like they would a human. Whether they want to track down info, receive on-demand alerts, or take action,

users can get tasks done with bots working on their behalf. All they have to do is “ask” the application

through the most common communication we use today: a text message. No more learning different UIs or

shifting from one app to another. You’ll be able to converse with your business systems from one place.

Bots: The new face of enterprise apps

Bots will be the personal assistants every employee dreams of having. They will streamline and automate

the low-level tasks that consume your workforce’s time. Bots will enhance productivity, eliminate human

error, and enable faster response to market changes or customer needs.

Bots also represent the next step in the technological transformation of the pharmaceutical industry.

When iPads were first introduced, pharmaceutical sales reps found ways to replace in-person transactions

with digital interactions. Bots have the potential to replace the initial human interactions between

physicians and sales reps.

Physicians typically are tech-savvy and among the fastest adopters of mobile devices, including tablets.

As such, they will likely be early adopters of bots. Pharmaceutical companies will be able to create bots for

physicians in the same way that they currently create apps. Possibilities include marketing bots (digital

brochures in bot form) as well as clinical decision support bots that are relevant to a company’s leading

pharmaceutical brands.

Not all bots are created equalHere are seven skills you should look for in bots when evaluating a bots-based enterprise

solution for your pharmaceutical enterprise:

1. Two-way conversations. Most bots available today only do one thing: provide alerts or information

to people. These bots use webhooks to trigger simple inbound alerts such as weather updates or

notifications about completed tasks. One-way alerts from business applications are valuable and

timely, but alerts, alone, won’t accelerate productivity or response time if the user can’t easily take

action. Bots must have two-way conversations with users. For example, pharmaceutical sales reps

should be able to direct their bots to perform routine tasks such as setting up appointments with

physician groups, or pulling up notes from previous account visits, all from the same place.

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With two-way communications and interconnected workflows, incoming alerts become actionable,

enabling users to quickly respond to work events without wasting time authenticating or finding key

information across multiple applications.

2. Communication with individuals and teams. People don’t need more irrelevant alerts flooding their

phones, inboxes, or computers. People need bots to deliver the right information, at the right time.

Alerts, information, and actions must be customizable for individuals and teams, such as a regional

sales team.

3. Human-like dialogue. To truly simplify the user experience, it must be conversational. Just like

users can “chat” or message a person or team, a user must be able to simply open a dialogue with

their business systems. Retailers have started to test the concept of conversational commerce.

Consumers engage with a retailer’s chat bots in a message-based dialogue that drives them from

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an initial search through to purchase. Similarly, pharmaceutical bots will help elevate the physician/

client experience via “conversational engagement.” In this scenario, a physician could “ask” a

pharmaceutical bot to bring up information about pharmaceutical products relevant to a patient’s

specific diagnosis, rather than scrolling or clicking through a series of menus.

4. Contextual, intelligent interactions. Today’s bots already store and use contextual information

such as preferences, dates and time, location-based services, and geo-fencing to determine when

to allow alerts and actions to occur. However, the highest value bots also will begin to leverage

greater machine-learning and artificial-intelligence capabilities. This will enable bots to anticipate

actions or alerts based on a user’s past context. Here’s an example of what that could mean to a

pharmaceutical sales rep.

Imagine if a bot had access to a pharmaceutical sales rep’s calendar and could anticipate an upcoming meeting with a physician/client. Prior to the meeting, the bot automatically gathers background data to prepare the rep for the visit. The bot might collect the list of products the physician currently uses, past order history, prior visit notes, and key contact information from Salesforce or Veeva. The sales rep is pleased and “likes” the information sent, helping the bot understand that it should perform similar actions in the future. After the rep’s in-person meeting, the bot “decides” that the rep might want to both update the opportunity status in Salesforce and set a notification for follow-up the next week. As the sales rep is leaving the physician’s office, the bot is working to eliminate tedious tasks that limit customer face-time and hinder new prospecting activity.

5. Universal presence. To ensure information is actionable from anywhere, bots must exist across

channels and devices. They should be able to live wherever a pharmaceutical enterprise decides to

put them. Place a bot within a mobile app, on an enterprise Intranet for all employees to see, within

a team social collaboration tool, and more. Determine if your bots can be more than just a new UI for

your enterprise apps. The most robust bots can also be the face of your customer interactions

or website.

6. Searchable, living records. Bots must carry the history of a conversation with them across

channels, enabling users to start a conversation in one place and continue it in another. They should

carry a living record of the conversation history with them, allowing a person or an organization to

search through past dialogues just as they would look through emails or other communication.

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About KoreKore’s revolutionary platform streamlines business workflows and communications with a single message-based interface. With Kore’s powerful bots, users can both receive alerts from the systems they use and send information back to those systems from a message. Kore provides robust administrative features and enterprise-grade security to comply with regulatory mandates.

To learn more about how Kore is simplifying the way people work, visit kore.com or call 844-USE-KORE.© 2016 Kore, Inc. All rights reserved.

7. A complete list of skills. For bots to solve the application-overload challenge, they must be easy

to build. Bot development must be timely and accurate, while meeting all of the aforementioned

guidelines. It should be easy for your IT team and others in operational roles such as human resources,

marketing, or field sales to add new tasks or new bots for the applications they run. Bots offer endless

possibilities for your pharmaceutical enterprise if created with the business in mind.

Get prepared: what to do next

Your IT organization should prepare for the future state of enterprise applications. You don’t have to

replace large legacy apps with hundreds of micro, cloud-based services from different vendors. Adding

new cloud-based applications increases cost, application-management cycles, data security threats,

and vendor-management challenges. And streamlining your user interface with bots can enhance staff

productivity, which can lead to an increased bottom line.

Think differently and don’t reinvent the wheel. Get in front of the most tech-savvy pharmaceutical

companies. Investigate how to use bots to simplify the way everyone from research and development

specialists to sales reps use all of your business’s enterprise applications.

Date post:	22-May-2020
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Bots: The Changing Face of Enterprise Applications€¦ · productivity during the workday is...

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