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2017 ENTERPRISE BOTS ADOPTION
Executive Summary
In todays digital world, automation and user experience have become critical
for enterprises. This has made bots central to the strategy of any forward-looking
enterprise. These bots drive operational efficiency and facilitate consumer
engagement. Their rapid adoption is witnessed across customer engagement,
IT operations, and various other business processes.
Bot adoption cannot However, as these bots proliferate, enterprises face significant challenges in
be a siloed, ad-hoc their assurance and governance. They are unable to assess which bots arent
initiative. Rather, it has working per design or which one will fail and the resultant impact on
to be driven enterprise- business. A poor remediation strategy is further creating business risks. These
wide with a view to challenges stem from limited planning, inadequate validation, fragmented
create value through control, and lack of attention to security and scalability.
orchestrated bot
assurance and
governance. A successful bots adoption strategy is critical for the digital world
1 and should be assisted by a strong vision and structured assurance
Bots can create business challenges if not assured and governed with a holistic
strategy. They can result in business downtime, increased reputation risk, and
significant overhead costs. This defeats the very purpose of bots adoption. As
increasing number of enterprise processes get impacted by bots, a carefully crafted
assurance strategy becomes the fulcrum for any successful digital enterprise.
With the increasing adoption of bots, enterprises should reconsider typical metrics
to evaluate success. They need to conduct a thorough assessment of their current
bots adoption and identify gaps in assurance, governance, and security.
Enterprise-wide bots collaboration in an automation-assisted environment will help
to drive bot assurance and minimize governance challenges.
This research addresses the concerns and challenges enterprises face in bots
adoption. It analyzes the adoption of bots by enterprises, the challenges they are
facing, and recommends a strategy to drive breakthrough value through an
assured bots adoption philosophy.
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Why bots?
In todays digital world where users consume services on their mobile devices,
interact with businesses via social media, and expect rapid resolution of their
issues regardless of the communication channel, enterprises need to ensure that
they can cater to the needs of these finicky customers. The advent of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and its subsegments, Machine Learning (ML) and Deep
Learning (DL), have opened new avenues for enterprises to leverage automation
and deliver improved experiences to their customers.
Enter bots
A bot (short for robot) is not a fear-inducing machine out to destroy mankind.
Rather, it is a way to automate activities, reduce manual intervention, complete
jobs faster, and engage users.
EX H IBIT 1
Informed
Enhanced decision-
experience making
Reduced
overheads
Improved
productivity
The enterprise Streamlined processes: Bots automate processes and eliminate friction among
landscape is getting different departments (e.g., running IT policy automation, driving self-service desk,
flooded by bots that and helping contact center operations)
provide multiple benefits Informed decision-making: By quickly fetching data from multiple sources, bots
beyond standard enable more informed decision-making for users (e.g., scanning thousands of IT
automation. operation logs for root cause analysis or providing history of all previous interactions
to a sales representative enabling her to chart out a suitable course of action)
Accessibility: Bots are always-on, connected, and contextual. Often accessed from
users mobile devices or simply running on their own based on business rules, they
offer ease of access and connectivity (e.g., bots invoked through spoken or textual
inputs on mobile devices)
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EX H IBIT 2
Customer
Major areas of bots adoption engagement Business
in enterprises
operations
Source: Everest Group
Employee
engagement
IT operations
Over 90% of Because of these and several other such benefits, bots have captured enterprises
enterprise bots are attention. They offer the opportunity to not only engage end-customers more
chatbots or script- effectively, but also improve internal operations. Consequently, several use cases
based automation have emerged of bots being used across organizations.
engines.
The Bots bonanza
There are four major types of bots:
Chat-based: Often called Chatbots, these are invoked through textual triggers
such as a message through chat interfaces. This is the most common type, as it is
also easy to develop and deploy
Video-based: There is an avatar of the bot that interacts via video and checks
for emotional response, facial cues, and mood through facial mapping and facial
recognition technologies
Audio-based: These communicate via audio media and respond by using natural
language generation
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EX HIBIT 3
Chat-based Video-based
Major types of bots
Source: Everest Group
Audio-based Rules-based
Clearly, bots adoption is among the top priorities for enterprises. There are several
other use cases of bots being adopted as customer service agents, personal
assistants, IT operations assistants, communication agents, and even in cybersecurity.
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Enterprises forget that While these are interesting and certainly innovative use cases of bots adoption, most
bots are pieces of enterprises are facing challenges in smoothly running their bot-enabled environment.
software and need They are struggling to answer four major questions:
assurance. This
assurance includes
availability, validation,
1. Can we identify which of the bots have stopped working?
and, traceability.
2. Can we assess which of the bots will stop working and when?
3. Can we address why the bots are not working the way they should?
The four questions above are tightly intertwined with a few fundamental dimensions
enterprises struggle with, as described below:
1. Vision: Bots adopted without a specific purpose and vision yield suboptimal
results owing to inadequate planning
a. Limited planning: Implementing a bot without evaluating its scope
(which activities and processes it can automate) and purpose (whether it is
needed in the current environment) leads to hindered adoption. A narrow
scope provides minimal returns, while an excessively broad scope becomes
a management hassle and defeats the very definition of a bot. Many
enterprises end up adopting bots with overlapping capabilities, which
diminishes business benefits that can be derived
b. Siloed adoption: Ad hoc and hasty adoption, which often stems from the
fear of missing out, ends up being an overkill. Each business unit and IT
function ends up driving its own bot agenda
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Enterprises struggle c. Traceability: Once the bots are operational, most enterprises struggle to
to plan their bots identify the bots that are not working as per the design. They witness an
adoption and often underperformance of their systems; however, they are not able to identify the
fail to ensure proper bots responsible for this. To ensure a proper root cause analysis, enterprises
functioning and will need to have strong traceability built into their bots operation framework
monitoring of the bots
ecosystem. They often 3. Governance: This is a commonly overlooked aspect of enterprise bots adoption
also struggle to manage
a. Control: Each business unit within siloed enterprises adopts, operates, and
the security and
governs bots in its own way. This fragmentation of bot governance creates
integration of bots across
operational challenges such as lack of visibility on performance. Moreover,
the enterprise.
as each unit defines its own bot workflow and policies, assessment of bot
impact across the enterprise becomes difficult
b. Standardization: Business units adopt bots with narrow scope within their
domain without an enterprise-wide governance and management policy.
This poses challenges for standardization of bot governance. Moreover, lack
of a centralized and orchestrated governance strategy creates management
complexities and prevents executive leadership from having a consolidated
view of bot performance across the board
EX H IBIT 4
Where are enterprises going wrong?
Enterprise challenges in
bots adoption
2. Assurance 1. Vision
4. Security 3. Governance
5. Scalability
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5. Scalability: Enterprise bots need to be scalable and flexible so that they can be
tweaked to users changing demands and avoid the rigidity associated with
monolithic systems
a. Volume-value balance: Bots usually perform specific functions such as
scheduling meetings, interacting with consumers, and automating IT
operational activities, among others. Owing to this typically narrow scope,
the number of bots adopted in an enterprise across business units balloons
over time. This burgeoning volume results in management complexities
including resource costs to manage bots, maintenance costs, and overheads.
Additionally, bot implementation across siloed units leads to multiplicity of
bots, creating redundancy and reduction in value derived
b. Extensibility & integration: Bots with point solutions lack the extensibility to
be integrated with other existing systems. In an enterprise landscape, bots
that cannot integrate with systems such as CRM, ERP, and mobile platforms
pose scalability challenges. Without cross-platform integration and
extensibility, bot adoption suffers
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Enterprises should Bots are here to stay. Every enterprise will, of course, create a business case for bots,
devise a structured will have a strong purpose of adoption, will build an architecture, and evaluate their
assurance and impact. However, all of this can happen only when enterprises focus on ROI -
governance strategy Remediation, Orchestration, and Integration.
in order to derive value
1. Remediation: Assuring that the bots are running and working as per design is
from their bots adoption.
the most critical aspect of a successful bots adoption strategy. Moreover, in case
This involves planning
bots go wrong or fail, enterprises will need to design fail-safe mechanisms to
for bot remediation,
ensure business continuity while remediating the bots. They also need to have a
orchestration, and
integration in a way mechanism to identify and rectify these failures. They should not only develop a
that does not hurt mechanism to sustain the business process when the bot is down, but also
business outcomes. develop ways to fix, train, and validate bot outcomes
EX HIBIT 5 Orchestration
Considerations for enterprise Integration
bots adoption
FOCUS
ON ROI
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Conclusion
Enterprises are already adopting bots and the implementations will only increase in
the future. We believe that though bot design and structured onboarding are
important, the true differentiation is the ability of an enterprise to make its bot
environment work holistically.
For this to happen, their vision, assurance, governance, security, and scalability need
to evolve. Everest Group observes enterprise bot adoption happening in three broad
models. The key is the value derived from bots adoption. Enterprises at different
stages in the maturity curve will exhibit unique characteristics across various
dimensions described below.
EX HIBIT 6
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All enterprises need to assess their bots adoption and understand specific
characteristics they exhibit. They need to invest in bots assurance to derive sustained
value. Simply adopting bots and expecting business value to materialize will not
work. An enterprise with full visibility of its bots landscape, strong remediation
processes, and where the teams work in tandem to derive business value from bots
will succeed in the new digital era.
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Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services,
and sourcing. We are trusted advisors to senior executives of leading enterprises, providers,
and investors. Our firm helps clients improve operational and financial performance
through a hands-on process that supports them in making well-informed decisions that
deliver high-impact results and achieve sustained value. Our insight and guidance
empower clients to improve organizational efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and
responsiveness. What sets Everest Group apart is the integration of deep sourcing
knowledge, problem-solving skills, and original research. Details and in-depth content are
available at www.everestgrp.com.
For more information about this topic please contact the author(s):
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