The use of virtual assistants in the workplace is growing. By 2021, Gartner, Inc. predicts that 25 per cent of digital workers will use a virtual employee assistant on a daily basis. This will be up from less than 2 per cent in 2019.
“We expect VEAs to be used by an increasing number of organisations over the next three years, Industries such as insurance and financial services are showing strong interest in piloting VEAs internally. We’ve also witnessed VAs being used in IT, customer service and information queries” said Annette Jump, senior director at Gartner.
The market for conversational platforms — VAs and chatbots — includes more than 1,000 vendors worldwide. In a few more years, a race to provide new capabilities will result in the vendor landscape changing drastically. “IT leaders looking to implement a conversation platform should determine the capabilities they need from such a platform in the short term, and select a vendor on that basis,” said Ms Jump.
Gartner predicts that, by 2023, 25 per cent of employee interactions with applications will be via voice, up from under 3 per cent in 2019.
“We believe that the popularity of connected speakers in the home, such as the Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod and Google Home, will increase pressure on businesses to enable similar devices in the workplace, While there are limitations on the actions that VPAs can perform, employees will readily expand the actions allowed as capabilities improve” said Van Baker, vice president at Gartner.
Gartner predicts that consumer and business spending on VPA speakers will top $3.5 billion in 2021.
In the healthcare sector, remote diagnostics and elder-care applications will be enabled by VPA speakers. “Voice technology is also already being used by physicians to document patient data within electronic health records, Voice recognition technology can also be used to place orders for tests and medications, which will save time. Undoubtedly, other companies will bring voice interactions with applications into the clinical setting, so that speech capabilities will rapidly become standard within most healthcare applications” added Mr Baker.
