AI and the Future of Enterprise Mobility

It seems as if artificial intelligence is creeping into every corner of our lives – including the mobility sector, where AI will play an increasingly important role in coming years.

We are already becoming familiar with the way AI can support the use of mobile devices with its predictive qualities, but can it play a more valuable role for companies that want to maximize the utility of mobile devices?

According to intelligence from CCS Insight, employees in the average firm are typically grappling with more than six apps in their daily work. But concerns are growing that workers are increasingly snowed under by the complexity and range of the apps they are asked to handle.

Artificial Intelligence in Business

A large proportion of companies now admit that they are involved in, at the very least, testing or researching AI for their businesses if not actually using it. But over a quarter of companies polled by CCS Insight believe that AI will enhance the way they make use of apps within the next two years.

An example of the kind of innovation we will see in the future is Amazon’s Alexa. While it is already finding traction in households, Amazon has not lost sight of its utility in the business environment.

Amazon is considered to be the dominant player in bringing artificial intelligence into the workplace. Several companies are looking at this, but at the November 2017 AWS reinvent conference, Amazon said it was launching a new platform that would enable companies to build their own skills and integrations for both business and practical use cases.

Amazon’s AWS CTO says businesses need to look beyond apps and smartphones to smart speakers. The company is starting with the conference room, working alongside other companies, like Polycom, to introduce smart speakers in the office environment. Amazon knows it cannot cover all the bases, and is partnering with a wide range companies, among them Microsoft, Concur and Splunk.

Like it or not, companies have to cope with the fact that the average worker now has access to several mobile devices and can reach email and other work-related applications on more than just his or her computer.

But will enterprises open their coffers to fund the development of further AI applications? We think so. The efficiencies that companies can realize are obvious. Organizations understand they can use AI not only to automate workflow, but also the speed of a firm’s security-response reaction. With the demonstrable vulnerability of enterprise mobile systems to external cyber threats, anything AI can bring to the defense in this game will be valued.

A survey by Oxford Economics and ServiceNow, which polled 500 CEOs across 25 sectors, found that more than half considered machine learning to be a major area of focus. This will translate into more spending – for example IDC projects growth in spending on AI and machine learning by corporations to leap from around $8 billion today to close to $50 billion within five years. Some of that spend will be directed at mobile applications, including those specifically serving the workplace.

Managed mobility services provider MOBI has produced its own study, entitled “Enterprise Mobility in 2017 and What Comes Next.” It interviewed 300 IT decision-makers to examine how their companies expected to use AI to help improve job performance, eliminate human errors and reduce the need for humans to perform many mundane tasks. The possibilities for realizing enhanced productivity in the workplace it reveals are very exciting indeed.

IT managers who operate mobility for companies in the tech sector say they expect an 18% improvement in job performance. On the other hand, they also anticipate that some jobs will disappear a result of the technology – a major consideration across businesses of all kinds in the next five years.

Amazon sees its AI, Alexa, becoming a useful tool within the workplace, as it is flexible enough for businesses to develop tailored Alexa skills. It can provide information more quickly and help employees access the data they need simply by voice request. Alexa for Business holds out the opportunity for developers of mobility apps to leverage the technology for the requirements of the mobile workspace too.

But what will be the barriers to implementing AI? Taking Alexa for Business as an example, companies will need to invest in Echo devices from Amazon, at least initially. Cost will be a key consideration.

In the MOBI study cited above, IT professionals saw expense as the biggest barrier to the introduction of AI into the mobile workspace, followed by security issues. Then there is the obvious drop in employee morale as AI starts to undermine job security. Some sectors will be more exposed than others, but the impact is likely to be profound.

There is no argument that AI will support enterprise mobility by helping workers do their jobs better. In some ways, its role may hardly be noticeable, in the same way as AI is starting to inform the online shopping experience. Virtual assistants on mobile devices will become commonplace and AI is more likely to be seen working quietly behind the scenes, for example supporting enterprise security or software implementation.

AI will also play an active role in the development of so-called “intelligent apps,” namely the new generation of emergent apps allowing developers to analyze how people use them. This helps, in turn, to guide new updates. AI also can help to route users to the right solution.

Intelligent apps within the workplace will become the norm, and corporations will be able to make use of AI to help them evolve their proprietary apps to meet the specific needs of their workers.

Some IT professionals predict that AI will assist in generating apps and experiences in a similar way to the developer ecosystem. Some companies are already experimenting with neural nets that will examine code bases and can then change the user interface themselves. This will be a radical change in the way workplace apps are developed.

AI is already able to change the content of apps to reflect the user, generating a more personalized interface. The next step to AI-generated apps will not be huge.

Thus far, AI’s introduction seems to have been well-received. Most IT professionals grappling with AI in the mobile environment told MOBI they were happy with its introduction in Android and Apple’s iOS.

For users themselves, AI’s influence is going to be subtler in the mobile environment. For example, it will help to save input time, perhaps in coordination with voice recognition as employed by Alexa. Indeed, the mobile app is likely to play a critical role as the primary interface between employees and the machine intelligence quietly managing much of a company’s day-to- day processes behind the scenes.