At Valence, we help enterprise customers understand and apply next-generation technologies in a smart and innovative way to advance business goals. We often experiment with these technologies within our own business, testing and tweaking how we design, develop, and deploy innovation. It often begins by identifying a simple challenge.

Challenge

Tracking down operational information within a company can be difficult. Whether an employee has questions about benefits, healthcare, or IT-related issues, they often spend valuable time searching through handbooks, emails, and websites to find answers.

Solution

Our innovation lab scoped this issue and created the Valence Bot.

The Valence Bot is a voice activated chatbot that uses Amazon Alexa to answer common employee questions and handle requests related to the company.

The Valence Bot was built on top of the core framework of Amazon Web Service Machine Learning using the Lex engine. After adding functionality and integration points to this framework, the Valence Bot is bundled into an Alexa private skill and deployed to employees using Alexa for Business.

Results

The Valence Bot eliminates the hassle of unnecessary maintenance tasks by providing employees instant access to information from anywhere using Alexa. Employees can now devote their time and energy to tasks that matter. Operational information, such as employee benefits, shipping information, and expense reimbursements are handled with Valence Bot. Tasks that took up internal overhead can also be addressed, such as resolving IT requests or ordering routine office supplies and equipment.