And now, Indian IT takes solutions built for employees to customers

IT firms are putting to use their own organisations as test beds to build solutions for clients

UVO is an employee chatbot that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve queries and engage with over 117,000 employees at IT services major Tech Mahindra.

The self-help tool, built on its enterprise chatbot framework Entellio, is used to respond to HR queries from employees instantly. Typically, queries on standard policies would be raised through a ticket to a backend shared services team which would take as much as four hours for response.

The chatbot has eliminated the delay and trains itself to respond to more complex questions from employees. It specialises in conversational speech to help search, converse and also provide support, and it is also capable of understanding human emotions

“Chatbots can also automate the lower-end jobs and move people toward more complicated work or innovation-led work both within company and for our clients,” says Sucharita Palepu, Global Head , People Practices at Tech Mahindra.

In the next two phases, the chatbot will also be trained to resolve emotional queries by any employee and offer voiced-enabled support working as a digital assistant like booking of tickets and applying of leaves over voice command.

Having demonstrated the tool with its employees and seen results, Tech Mahindra plans to take this tool to clients globally.  It is engaged with a few clients for a  pilot.

Indian IT services firms have traditionally been focusing on delivering services based on client directions. But as they mature and become multi-billion dollar organisations with thousands of employees, the pressure increases on them from clients to identify and solve customer problems, instead of working on predefined parameters.

Now, they are putting to use their own organisations as test beds to build solutions, which they take to customers.

Take L&T Technology Services. It is building a model for personal protection equipment to help improve safety and performance of construction engineers and workers, by collaborating with its parent L&T.

While demonstrating the solution at its various construction sites — 200,000 workers at sites across India, it equips workers and engineers with helmet, gloves, jackets and shoes that has sensors capturing their performance and sending it to a centralised database on the cloud. The solution helps in identifying the safety  of workers in remote places, a crucial thing in large distributed and isolated workplaces in construction, oil rigs and factories. L&T Technology is engaging global customers for this solution.

“Our DNA of engineering is being merged with the technology and come out with a solution. This can have wide applications,” said Keshab Panda, CEO and MD  of L&T Technology Services.