Epicor has announced the release of a new AI-based digital agent, the Epicor Virtual Agent (EVA), which promotes business growth and aims to help users work smarter and accelerate the pace of business operations.
EVA was developed to execute tasks, predict, recommend and adjust actions within a given field. On-screen, it appears as a virtual assistant that enables users to access it by voice or text, it also transforms data into visual which essentially create an intuitive experience to complete actions on various devices.
Like most AI-based products, it is powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and user are able to access EVA through their mobile devices where the agent will help accelerate the process and maximize the quality of their decisions.
In addition to this, EVA delivers alerts and takes action within set parameters which often correlate with a combination of events, market statistics, and historical data in order to maximize efficiency and make informed decisions.
EVA promises to improve accuracy and problem spotting and has the ability to adjust the levels of production and distribution of products depending on customer demand.,
Senior VP of Product Marketing at Epicor, Scott Hays, stated: “New forms of interacting with business software solutions are a key to accelerating the pace of operations and improving the exchange of data and information. Having an intelligent agent at hand will help companies become more agile and responsive to unexpected events and rapidly changing customer demands.”
He added, “With EVA, you interact naturally with your ERP system. It’s as easy as just talking or typing to a colleague. This makes the breadth and depth of the industry-specific functionality and information available inside the system directly accessible to a larger audience, boosting productivity and efficiency, and giving the company an improved return on their ERP investment.”
Industry analyst, Gartner, predicts that by 2022, over 50 per cent of all people collaborating in Industry 4.0 ecosystems will utilize virtual assistants or agents.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that 30 per cent of enterprise apps by 2022 will be task-level intelligent.
“As consumers, we’re already familiar with conversational technology, EVA will be easy for users to start working with straight away. Furthermore, thanks to its machine learning component, the more you use EVA, the better it will work for you. We are confident that using an artificial intelligence-based agent that has deep industry-specific applications will make their enterprise systems more predictive, adaptive, and proactive. EVA will enable customers of all sizes, regardless of their operating model, to increase productivity, work smarter, and grow their business in whatever direction they want in today’s Industry 4.0 ecosystem,” said Hays.
During Epicor’s global user conference, Insights 2019, in Las Vegas, the company demonstrated various use-cases for the AI-based agent. Using EVA when it comes to manufacturing, helps detect an abnormality in the early stages of the production process which will prove beneficial if the production manager acknowledges the information and takes preventative measure to minimize or avoid further damage.
In terms of the distribution process however, EVA provides sales representatives to obtain information about the product such as the price and availability. It allows them to create a quote on a mobile device while interacting with a potential customer which saved a great deal of time.
These are just a couple of examples of the use cases discussed by Epicor at the conference.
EVA will be made available on the market by May 2019.