Low-code development Archives - BotCore Enterprise Chatbot Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:38:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://botcore.ai/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cropped-favicon-32x32-1-70x70.png Low-code development Archives - BotCore 32 32 Why The Future Of Chatbots is Low-Code https://botcore.ai/blog/low-code-chatbots/ Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:33:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=7476 Why The Future Of Chatbots is Low-Code Gartner predicts, Low-code application building would gather more than 65% of all app development functions by the year 2024. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the entire business landscape and compelled businesses to face never-seen-before challenges and develop new workflows. Moreover, an increasing focus on the digitization of the […]

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Why The Future Of Chatbots is Low-Code

Gartner predicts, Low-code application building would gather more than 65% of all app development functions by the year 2024.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the entire business landscape and compelled businesses to face never-seen-before challenges and develop new workflows. Moreover, an increasing focus on the digitization of the industry drove up the demand for text and voice-based bots that automate day-to-day operations and deliver exceptional customer support.

With the IT department dealing with massive resource scarcity and struggling to develop apps for various business problems, enterprises started looking at smart solutions that allow people with little or no coding knowledge to quickly deploy AI-powered bots for a host of business use cases. No wonder many organizations turned to low-code app development platforms (LCAPs).

Low-code platforms are indeed the future of chatbot development. So, what’s a low-code app development platform? A low-code application platform, or an LCAP, is an interactive platform that leverages a visual interface, such as drag-and-drop tooling and pre-configured templates, to empower users to develop and deploy professional-grade bots within days.

Let’s explore further.

Benefits of building chatbots on a low-code platform

1. Infuses agility

The first and foremost advantage of low-code development is the agility that it allows in business operations because a) it’s quicker to build bots with pre-built modules and templates in a visual interface, b) employees, who are experts in their domains, can easily develop and refine their bots without the need to explain their ideas to others (coders). Research has shown low-code platforms can potentially reduce development time by up to 90%.

2. Reduces development costs

Hiring skilled developers proves heavier on the cost side. Low-code solutions require little or no coding knowledge, so professional and citizen developers alike can quickly build and deploy any app, making it economically viable to create intelligent chatbots for different business use cases, including service desk management, IT helpdesk, HR automation, etc.

3. Allows flexible integration

Low-code app development platforms allow integration with various SaaS-based and on-premise enterprise systems, helping organizations get a single-window view of their data.

4. Encourages innovation across functions and levels

Since low-code platforms enable domain/subject-matter experts to collaborate, develop, and customize their bots, they democratize innovation by not restricting it to a core team or group of individuals.

Seven low-code development tools for chatbots

1. Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents (PVA) is a Microsoft software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering in the low-code app development space. Microsoft’s Cloud services host the application; hence PVA significantly reduces the need for a conducive environment to deploy and maintain the bots.

Bot Framework and Azure Bot Service and Cognitive Services form the SDK to build chatbots using a guided, no-code visual interface, allowing citizen developers to build and deploy chatbots quickly. PVA greatly reduces the need to have the infrastructure to maintain and deploy chatbots as Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services does all the heavy lifting of providing a conducive environment to host the application.

Read More: Power Virtual Agents & Power Automate – Truly Powerful!

2. Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a leading low-code chatbot development platform for Facebook Messenger. Chatfuel supports many languages and allows integration with several third-party apps.
Chatfuel’s built-in guides and predefined bot templates help create bots for automated customer support and sales and marketing activities easily. An analytics dashboard allows users to monitor and analyze several business and chatbot metrics.

3. FlowXO

FlowXO enables users to build both simple and complex AI bots and connect them to more than 100 different cloud apps. FlowXO provides a visual flow editor, supports multilingual chatbots, and allows integration with popular apps, such as Facebook and Slack. Other features include the ability to send emails and attachments and build chatbot widgets for websites.

4. Botsify

Botsify uses an easy-to-navigate drag-and-drop interface that enables users to build template designs for chatbots. Botsify’s chatbots are used by well-established companies, including Apple and Shazam.

The bots integrate with services, such as WordPress, Alexa, ZenDesk, Google Sheets, etc., and can collate user information, track sales leads, and automate sales chats.

5. BotKit

With a semantic chat interface, BotKit’s chatbots imitate human conversations. The platform boasts interesting features like a visual conversation builder and open source libraries.

Other features include activity monitoring, detailed statistics, and flexible API integrations.

6. TARS

TARS is another low-code bot-building platform that democratizes the process of building chatbots with pre-built templates that are easy to edit and customize.

Other exciting features of the platform include – integration with Zapier, file and image upload, custom branding, API integration, and the option to export data to Excel/CSV.

7. BotCore

At Acuvate, we help clients build and deploy AI-enabled chatbots quickly with our low-code enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

Fully deployable on Microsoft Cloud, BotCore’s graphical interface with drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built templates, and an integrated Knowledge Graph consisting of multi-functional nodes enable professional and citizen developers alike to create and deploy chatbots in a matter of days.

Some of the powerful features of BotCore include –

  • BotCore leverages Message Definition Language (MDL) to define bot responses
  • Technologies like natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU), and machine learning enable our bots to understand the context, learn from past conversations, and respond to users in a human-like manner.
  • Seamless agent handover capability allows bots to handle simple requests while escalating the more complex ones to human agents when needed.
  • BotCore will enable clients to build multilingual bots that can be deployed across various channels, giving users a seamless omnichannel experience.
  • Our bots can aggregate the best of Microsoft technologies, including LUIS bots, Power Virtual Agents, QnA Maker bots, and other third-party bot applications.

To know more about BotCore, feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our chatbot experts.

Further Reading:

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]]> 6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021 https://botcore.ai/blog/cio-prioritites-2021/ Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:03:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=7418 6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021 In 2020, CIOs and other IT leaders have solved several unprecedented challenges and became key enablers in business continuity. CIOs are now in a dilemma regarding the orientation of their efforts and resources in 2021. While building resilience is still a priority, it’s time to plan for recovery post […]

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6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021

In 2020, CIOs and other IT leaders have solved several unprecedented challenges and became key enablers in business continuity. CIOs are now in a dilemma regarding the orientation of their efforts and resources in 2021. While building resilience is still a priority, it’s time to plan for recovery post pandemic.

As millions of workers shifted to the remote setup, and customers moved online, businesses leveraged digital technologies to augment customer and employee experiences.

In a Harvey Nash/KPMG 2020 CIO survey, which polled 4,200 IT leaders, 61% of CIOs say they feel more influential than ever before, courtesy of their work to help hedge their businesses against the coronavirus.

However, rapid digital acceleration and adoption of cloud and other technologies have also brought many pressing issues to the forefront – the most significant one being the management of an increasingly complex IT infrastructure.

In a survey conducted among 1000 IT leaders, 63% reported technology management had become more difficult.

Yet, leaders globally have accepted the importance of technology as a business growth accelerator and will continue to work upon that in 2021 – even with tightened budget restrictions.

Let’s explore the top CIO priorities in 2021.

Top CIO Priorities For 2021

1. Low-code development

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic put immense pressure on the IT department to quickly develop new business apps to meet changing organizational needs. Faced with a massive resource crunch, many IT leaders implemented Low-code Application Platforms (LCAP) to enable business functions to develop and deploy custom apps quickly, and by themselves – with little to no reliance on IT.  These platforms don’t require users to have prior coding experience.

Low-code platforms empower pro and citizen developers alike to build apps seamlessly, using canvas and model-based scenarios and automated testing. With LCAPs, CIOs can save costs in the long run, as –

  • Less coding means more apps can be developed in a shorter period of time
  • With low-code requirements, basic and quick apps, can be developed by less experienced employees, while professional developers can create complex solutions – but in much less time and cost.

As companies continue to focus on agility in operations and make their way to recovery in 2021, implementing low-code platforms like Microsoft PowerApps will be a top CIO priority in 2021.

Learn More: How Low-Code Application Platforms Are Driving Agility In the New Normal

2. Getting To The Next Phase of Chatbot Maturity

AI-enabled chatbots and virtual assistants gained widespread popularity in 2020.

To reduce wait-time and provide support at scale at lower costs, leaders implemented AI bots that leveraged natural language processing to hold human-like conversations with customers and employees and resolve queries quickly.

We have seen companies implement multiple employee-facing chatbots for a variety of use cases – There is a chatbot for HR support, another chatbot for IT issues, one more bot to let employees access information from LoB systems.

In 2021, we will see CIOs unifying all these individualized bots into a single aggregator bot or an intelligent employee assistant to provide a consistent user experience and reduce maintenance costs.

Similarly many customer-facing chatbots that were deployed during the pandemic focused solely on delivering support and quick information. In 2021, as recovery and bottomline becomes critical, leaders will focus on building brand loyalty, driving retention and generating revenue through chatbots. Chatbot use cases will be expanded to upselling, cross-selling, providing personalized recommendations and user experiences.

As such, capabilities like conversational analytics, sentiment analysis, and omnichannel engagement will become critical.

3. Enabling The Return to workplace

Another critical area that CIOs will prioritize is preparing their organization for a hybrid workplace setup in 2021. This will include investing in the right technology needed for a safe and smooth transition back to the workplace while also ensuring the availability of better collaboration tools, resources, and training essential to function remotely for an effective hybrid model.

Leaders must strike a delicate balance between resuming standard operations and managing the realities of the post-COVID era, including redesigning workplaces and redefining workflows to keep employees safe, productive, and aligned.

Autonomous digital workplace platforms and low-code return-to-workplace apps are a few solutions CIOs can consider.

Learn More: Getting Ready for the Hybrid Workplace: The New Normal of Work

4. AIOps

Owing to the pandemic, organizations around the world adopted digital transformations at an accelerated pace to be able to function in a remote setup and build agility and resilience in their operations.

However, as the number of apps, servers, and systems grew, it gave rise to an increasingly complex IT infrastructure, which can no longer be managed and protected by traditional performance monitoring systems and human agents.  Even a single IT outage could cripple business operations and cost millions of rupees in revenue. As seen above, more than 60% of IT leaders felt technology management had become more difficult.

That’s where AIOps came into the picture. Artificial Intelligence for IT operations, also known as AIOps, leverages machine learning, big data, and analytics, analyzing heaps of IT data generated, diagnosing issues in real-time, improving application performance and uptime by predicting future outages, and reducing operations and maintenance expenditure.

Therefore, as businesses continue to operate in a highly dynamic and componentized IT landscape, the adoption and implementation of AIOps for IT operations management and cybersecurity will be a major CIO priority in 2021.

5. Reducing silos and streamlining the technology landscape

COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation journeys and increased adoption of various AI and remote working technologies. While these initiatives did ensure business survival in 2020, they are now posing a new challenge – increased technological silos. In 2020, companies rushed into digital transformation – but with no solid strategy. We have seen the implementation of various siloed remote working apps, custom mobile apps, and several function-specific systems that have individualized use cases and served for one-off purposes.

Now is the time for CIOs to unify all these apps together with a Digital Experience Platform (DEX) and reduce silos. A DXP acts as a centralized digital platform which offers flexible app integrations and easy extensions for emerging business needs.

6. IT as an enabler of business growth

The drastic shift in consumer and employee habits has completely transformed the expectations from IT. For CIOs, the opportunities expand beyond routine – building digital capabilities and getting new tools and systems for the organization.

Instead, the expectation is to enhance core capabilities and align outcomes to key business goals. For example, say you are working to increase revenue by 10% through digital commerce. Everything you do, including your people, technologies, and processes, must then tie back to this goal in an outcome-driven environment.

Thus, reinforcing the role IT plays as a strategic enabler of business growth will be a top CIO priority in 2021.

Final Thoughts

As digital transformations have led the way for change in 2020, the role of CIOs has come to the forefront. They have not only ensured that businesses transition smoothly to a remote setup, but have also integrated operational continuity as a critical element in their overall IT strategy.

CIOs have been given buy-in from every level of the organization. In 2021, as the role of IT into a driver of business growth, there is an enormous opportunity for CIOs to transform and future-proof their businesses for a new normal.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our customer service transformation experts for a personalized consultation.

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