It’s 4:55 PM on a Friday afternoon. You’re racing against the clock to finish up your work before the weekend, when suddenly your boss slacks you an urgent question that you don’t know the answer to. You scramble to dig through your files, emails, and various apps trying to piece together the information she needs. 20 stressful minutes later, you’ve finally collected enough fragments to attempt a response. Exhausted, you press send and hopes it satisfies her request.
Situations like this are all too common in today’s workplace. Important information lives scattered across so many different systems and data silos. Employees waste countless hours hunting down answers by switching frantically between applications, performing fragmented searches, and trying to synthesize data from disparate sources. This fragmented approach is hugely inefficient, not to mention mentally taxing. There has to be a better way.
Conversational AI to the Rescue
What if you could simply ask questions in plain English and get direct answers instantly, without having to hunt across all your company's data silos? This is the promise of conversational artificial intelligence. By implementing a chatbot that can understand natural language requests, seamlessly access and connect to company information locked away in databases, files, and apps, it could revolutionize how knowledge workers find answers and make decisions based on all available data. No more switching between applications or remembering where certain data lives. Just fast, accurate responses provided on demand.
Locusive Makes It a Reality
This is exactly what Locusive provides. Locusive employs a sophisticated conversational AI that indexes and connects to all your business systems, from CRMs to project tools to individual files. Ask it a question conversationally, and it will immediately deliver a direct answer by automatically querying and compiling the right information from across your company data. No more fragmented searches or switching contexts. Locusive cuts through the clutter, retrieving precise answers and linking back to original sources for transparency.
In this article, we’ll explore the common frustrations around siloed data, demonstrate Locusive’s solution, and show you how to quickly find answers to any question from your company's information. Let's dive in!
The Problem: Searching Company Data Is A Time Sink
In today's digital workplace, important business information is scattered across a lot of disconnected systems and data silos. Sales records in your CRM, project details in Asana, financial figures in QuickBooks, client assets in Dropbox - the list goes on. While technology has enabled easy storage and access of data, it has also led to dangerous fragmentation. This presents huge obstacles for employees tasked with finding and compiling answers from across these disconnected sources.
Scattered Data Makes Finding Answers Difficult
When data lives in so many different applications and repositories, it becomes extremely difficult to piece together a full answer for any given question. You may find fragments of the answer in multiple places, but rarely will one source have the full picture. This leaves employees manually searching across siloed systems, trying to stitch together partial facts, figures, and details. A frustrating and time-consuming process.
Switching Between Apps is Cumbersome
The process of hunting for answers typically involves an unhealthy amount of app switching. You may start in your CRM, then jump to Gmail to find a certain email, then open a spreadsheet on Google Drive, then access a relevant document in Dropbox. The constant context switching is disruptive to workflows and makes focusing intensely on a problem near impossible.
Mentally Taxing to Know Where to Look
On top of the mechanical inefficiencies of switching between apps and repositories, searching siloed data takes real mental energy. Because information lives in so many different places, employees must keep a mental map of where certain types of data resides within their organization. Recall which documents live in which folders, which figures can be found in which systems, etc. Keeping all of this straight takes tremendous effort.
Leads to Wasted Time and Frustration
As a sum of these issues, hunting for answers in today's siloed data landscape equates to massive inefficiency and frustration. Employees lose productive hours switching between applications, performing fragmented searches based on their best guesses of data location, and attempting to contextualize piecemeal findings. A major time sink that drains energy and impacts the ability to make quick, informed decisions.
Clearly there needs to be a better way for company employees to tap into all of the great data at their fingertips - without the headaches of fragmentation.
Next we'll explore the solution.
The Solution: A Smart Chatbot That Finds Answers Instantly
The solution to siloed data is a smart chatbot that can understand questions in natural language and instantly provide answers by querying across all company systems. Rather than having to manually search through disconnected apps and repositories, employees can simply ask the chatbot a question conversationally and get a direct response.
Conversational AI That Understands Work Queries
At the core of the solution is an AI engine that understands natural language queries. Much more than simplistic keyword matching, it should be able to parse nuanced queries and understand the true intent - "What was our net revenue for mobile products last quarter?"
Seamless Connectivity to All Company Data
This AI engine needs to be able to access and connect with all of the company's various data sources - for example, you may have key documents in a Google Drive folder, account data in Salesforce, and FAQs on your public website. It should index and integrate with these systems through standard APIs and connectors, building a knowledge graph.
Delivering Instant Answers
With natural language understanding and connections to disparate data sources, the chatbot can then provide direct answers to your questions within seconds by searching through all your data and identifying the answer to your question, providing a link back to your source documents so that you can rest assured that you are getting a reliable response. No more hunting through apps or piecing together partial information. Answers are compiled automatically from relevant sources and served up instantly.
More Than Just Links
Many search solutions simply return a list of loosely related documents, which requires you to still put in effort to understand those documents and find your answer. Rather than just links, it provides full context.
Transparency Through Source Linking
While answers should be compiled from across data sources, it's crucial to maintain transparency. Many businesses worry about AI making up answers, and they need to ensure that information they receive is reliable and comes from trusted sources. Users can then easily validate or explore further.
This conversational AI approach eliminates the need to manually search through siloed systems and synthesizes responses on the fly from all relevant company data. Next, we'll walk through real examples of how it streamlines work.
Using The Chatbot to Streamline Work
Now let's walk through some examples of how this conversational AI assistant can streamline work by delivering fast answers to common business questions without having to manually search through siloed systems.
Examples of Questions It Can Answer
Here are just a few examples of practical questions the chatbot can instantly answer by querying company data:
- "What were the total sales for the Northwest region last month?"
- "When is the deadline for the Johnson account's project deliverables?"
- "What's the PTO balance for my team member Michael?"
- "Did Frank in marketing approve the budget for our upcoming virtual event?"
As you can see, it understands natural language and can answer a wide range of common work queries.
A Typical Interaction
Interacting with the chatbot is as easy as having a conversation with a colleague over chat.
Simply type a question in the chat interface and the bot will immediately compile the answer from relevant data sources and return it to you, along with links back to the source documents and systems.
No More Hunting for Info
Because the chatbot has already indexed and connected to all the company's systems, you won't have to hunt for your information manually from every single system where you think it might be. The right answers served up instantly.
Saves Time and Mental Energy
Having a conversational chatbot interface eliminates the need to manually search across multiple apps and data sources to find answers. Employees no longer waste time switching contexts between applications and Spreadsheets. They also avoid the mental drain of having to recall which information lives where across all of the company's disparate systems.
By providing quick access to any answer from all company data through natural conversation, this kind of chatbot removes the pain points of siloed, fragmented information. Employees can be more focused, informed, and productive by getting any information they need within seconds using plain English questions.
Ultimately, this conversational AI technology helps companies tap into the knowledge stored across their systems - without the headaches of hunting down information in scattered silos. Employees have fast access to any answer they need to efficiently perform their roles and make data-driven decisions.
In the next section, we'll cover how you can implement this transformative solution for your own business.
Next Steps: Try Locusive's Conversational AI for Your Business
Now that we've covered the common problems of siloed data and how a conversational AI chatbot can provide a solution, it's time to put this transformative technology to work for your business. Locusive offers an enterprise-ready conversational AI that connects to all your systems and delivers fast answers to any question employees ask.
Recap of Benefits
Let's quickly recap the key benefits Locusive provides:
- Natural language Understanding of queries
- Connectivity to all your data sources
- Direct answers delivered instantly
- Compiled responses - not just links
- Full transparency through source linking
Schedule A Demo
Ready to eliminate wasted hours spent searching across data silos? You can try schedule a demo to see how it can help you save time and boost productivity for you or your employees.
Let Us Know If You Have Any Other Questions!
We're passionate about helping companies tap into their data through conversation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.
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