Alexa for Business

Alexa for Business is a service that enables organisations and employees to use Alexa to be more productive. Employees can use it in meeting rooms, desks, etc.

Alexa for Business is a service that enables organisations and employees to use Alexa to be more productive. Employees can use Alexa as their assistant in meeting rooms, at their desks, and even with the Alexa devices they already use at home or on the go. IT and facilities managers can also use Alexa for Business to measure and increase the utilisation of the existing meeting rooms in their workplace.

What are the benefits of Alexa for Business?

  • Meeting rooms personalised experiences
  • Increase and organise meeting room utilisation
  • Improve employee’s lives and enhance productivity
  • Leverage voice enabled applications

The workplace is a busy place and the online world has made certain work-related tasks significantly easier. However, there is still room for improvement and many use cases in which voice technology can improve the speed, flexibility and efficiency of any office environment.

Codrin is CEO of Digital Authority Partners [4]

Meeting rooms personalised experiences

Alexa allows you to make reservations and kick off meetings. There is no need to check room availability or manually dial-up to the room. Users can just say:

  • “Alexa, join the meeting” to start their online meeting
  • “Alexa, is this room booked?” to find if the meeting room is free
  • “Alexa, who booked the room”, to find who made the booking
  • “Alexa, book the room” to quickly book a meeting room

You can also send reminders a few minutes prior to starting the meeting or prior ending it. This enhances accuracy by starting at the right time and finishing as well.

Increase and organise meeting room utilisation

Alexa for Business can automatically release booked yet unattended meeting room reservations after a chosen time period, making meeting rooms available to your employees when they need them.

It also keeps track of metrics like:

  • attendance rate
  • recovered bookings
  • used rooms
  • others

Improve employee’s lives and enhance productivity

There are several improvements to leverage and friction to be removed from everyday activities:

  • link their email & calendars with Alexa
  • join online meetings
  • schedule or re-schedule calendar meeting events
  • inform meeting participants if they are running late or get work briefings to prepare for their work day

Leverage voice enabled applications

There are several voice interfaces to applications such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, or any of your custom apps and services. Custom skills can be selectively enabled in conference rooms or for employees to use on their personal devices.

How does Alexa for Business work?

Alexa for Business utilises information about the devices, user accounts, and skills in your organisation. When someone asks Alexa a question, Alexa uses this information to respond or perform the requested action. For example, when a user says “Alexa, start the meeting” in a conference room, Alexa uses the location of the device, the calendar information for the room, and the type of video conferencing equipment available, all stored in your Alexa for Business account, to start the meeting.

AWS Alexa for Business
Credit: AWS Alexa for Business

References

  • [1] Alexa for Business website
  • [2] Join Zoom meetings with Alexa to stay connected with colleagues and friends
  • [3] Hands-free meetings with Logitech Zoom Rooms and Alexa for Business
  • [4] Alexa for Business: What Every Executive Should Know in 2021