Critical_Capabilitie_748700_ndx

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 3 of 28 Different use cases within an organization do indeed need different platform vendor capabilities, often with subtly different approaches. In fact, different use cases and levels of sophistication not only need different kinds of dialogue, but will run into different requirements when it comes to deployment environment, privacy compliance, security measures and integration ability with existing systems. This Critical Capabilities report identifies the major functional capabilities that enterprise conversational AI platforms include, weighted for what Gartner sees as the five most common use cases. Each vendor is rated on those capabilities in order to enable a comparison between them. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 6 of 28 Vendors’ Product Scores for Human Resources Use Case Source: Gartner (March 2022) This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 9 of 28 Vendors [24]7.ai The [24]7.ai Engagement Cloud is a fully featured and mature contact center solution. It integrates and automates chat, messaging and voice channels with virtual and live agents. The company also offers complementary components to assist with specific types of interactions, as well as its Agent Services for business process outsourcing. The [24]7 Answers component is a knowledge base with multilingual support for FAQ. The [24]7 Assist AI component is an agent recommendation solution. Some of the stronger features in the [24]7.ai Engagement Cloud are related to customer service, where the company has a well-established base of large deployments. Notable capabilities include its experience with telephony deployments, experience with back-end integrations, its agent escalation and live integration options, as well as its analytics. The company also has an experienced professional services organization. [24]7.ai scored in the first quartile in both the customer service and the voice bot in call center use cases. Customer service has been a historical focus and strength for the company. The company has not focused as much on non-contact-center employee-facing chatbot applications, such as for IT service desk and HR. It scored in the third quartile in those use cases. The company scored in the second quartile in the orchestration of multiple employee-facing bots use case. Aisera Aisera Conversational AI is a fully featured platform that can be integrated with both Aisera Conversational Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Aisera Ticket AI for full automation of service desks. The company also offers AI Service Desk (for IT and HR), AI Customer Service and AI Customer Engagement, which build on the core platform. Aisera is particularly suited for support and for service desks catering to support. The platform integrates easily with most ticketing systems and offers several time- and effort- saving features in automating creation and resolution of tickets. Particularly for domains like IT service and HR, Aisera has prebuilt intents and dialogue flows that accelerate deployment. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 12 of 28 The platform takes an unsupervised learning-first approach and presents lightweight no- code interfaces for users to create virtual assistant experiences. A differentiator for Avaamo is the simplicity of the development experience achieved by generative and sparse data methods, where it has patents. Avaamo also tightly integrates voice and text in the design experience, with differentiating features for localization of entities with speech hints. The company scored in the second quartile for all five key use cases, with its highest score in orchestration of multiple employee-facing bots, followed by customer service, where it supports many integrations and complex end-to-end workflows. The scoring reflects the flexibility and versatility of the Avaamo platform. boost.ai The boost.ai conversational AI platform supports all common channels, has prebuilt industry modules, and offers a no-code option for many common functions. It has an intent architecture that enables it to scale to 10,000 intents while maintaining strong resolution rates. The solution supports integrations with leading CRM and contact center solutions and has a flexible live agent chat integration. Much of boost.ai’s innovation and differentiation lies in its ability to orchestrate multiple chat applications in large-scale distributed organizations. It is there where its unique virtual agent network (VAN) capability can be leveraged. This is accompanied with an approach for scaling to large numbers of intents. The boost.ai solution scored highest in the IT service desk and human resources use cases, where it was ranked in the second quartile. It is in these multiple departmental-type deployments where boost.ai is strongest. In customer service, it scored in the third quartile. Support for voice and telephony is a relatively new capability, and boost.ai scored in the fourth quartile for voice bot in call center use case. Cognigy Cognigy.AI is Cognigy’s complete conversational AI platform that comes integrated with Cognigy Voice Gateway and Cognigy Insights for additional synergetic features. Cognigy.AI has a very flexible and modern architecture that makes it easy to deploy in a variety of different environments, especially suited for complex architectures with a variety of services and components. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 15 of 28 The OCP miniApps architecture makes it possible to modularize tasks and skills. Based on this capability, Omilia offers an extensive set of prebuilt modules, intents and entity types for a broad range of industries. An additional differentiator for OCP is a strong set of voice capabilities. Omilia scored in the first quartile for the customer service, IT service desk, voice bot in call center and orchestration of multiple employee-facing bots use cases. This is in part due to OCP’s approach and experience, which fit well in those use cases, and to its modular miniApps approach. OCP lacks experience in the HR use case and was rated in the third quartile, which reflects its lack of experience with enterprise business application enablement. OneReach.ai OneReach.ai’s Communication Studio G2 is a voice-first conversational AI platform with impressive capabilities in an impressive packaging. It has a very flexible microservices architecture that eases integration with third-party components, and back-end systems that will be available inside of its no-code environment. OneReach.ai prioritizes the user experience associated with conversations built on the platform. It has a vision for what constitutes good conversational design that is expressed through its offering and training materials to help users craft high-quality experiences. This care for implementation quality extends into the partner ecosystem. Additionally, OneReach.ai has very strong voice capabilities that come from a voice-first approach. OneReach.ai scores in the first quartile in all use cases and more impressively scored highest in all but one use case. This is due to the consistency of its capabilities, and its focus being well-aligned with Gartner’s definition of the enterprise conversational AI platform market. While other vendors have higher scores in individual capabilities, OneReach.ai has the highest average. With the addition of voice capabilities that stand out, it pushes OneReach.ai ahead of the competition. Openstream.ai Openstream.ai’s Eva is a multimodal enterprise conversational AI platform that addresses complex B2B, B2C and B2E use cases. Complementary solutions include Openstream.ai’s Agent Desktop with Agent Assist, which provides an alternative option to incumbent agent dashboards, and its prepackaged Eva smart assistant for employees. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 18 of 28 Sinch Sinch’s Chatlayer conversational platform is offered in its broad communications platform as a service (CPaaS) and includes an integrated agent dashboard. Related SaaS applications include a rich messaging campaign solution (Campaigns), an omnichannel cloud contact center solution (Contact Pro) and an AI knowledge base search tool. Chatlayer offers prebuilt intents for common industries and domains; however, these are not yet incorporated into a marketplace for Sinch’s broad set of global partners. The Chatlayer dialogue management allows application development, but is less suitable for orchestrator bot concepts and doesn’t allow integration of third-party NLP engines. Chatlayer offers advanced chatbot analytics and testing via integration with Botium Box. This strengthens its built-in analytic capabilities with a complementary and unique third- party solution. Sinch’s main strength is the synergies enabled when using it together with its larger SaaS and CPaaS portfolio. Sinch scored better in the IT service desk and human resources use cases, where it was in the third quartile. It scored in the fourth quartile in the other three use cases. This was largely the result of its limited breadth of references for these use cases. SmarTek21 SmarTek21 offers SmartBotHub, which offers full enterprise conversational AI capabilities. It has synergies with the Enterprise Cloud Connect product. The combination offers a strong ability to integrate across many back-end systems. The SmartBotHub platform also offers many preconfigured integrations. SmartBotHub is a solution that has all the requisite capabilities, but aside from the integration capabilities, little stands out as exceptional compared to the overall market. Although the company focuses primarily on customer service, the capabilities are usable for all use cases. An interesting addition is the Digital Meeting Assistant, which has the potential to be a differentiator in the future. SmartBotHub is quite flexible in its customization capabilities; and its strength is deployments inside very complex and custom IT architectures. SmarTek21 is in the third quartile for all use cases except HR, where it’s in the fourth. Its platform is consistent in the scoring and checks all the boxes for what an enterprise conversational AI platform has to support. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 21 of 28 Natural Language Understanding NLU is the ability to understand natural language used by the user, which includes intent recognition as well as entity recognition, and the ease of customizing and training the language model for non-data scientists. Voice Capabilities Voice capabilities are the ability to understand and implement sophisticated voice experiences on either dedicated devices or using telephony. Dialogue Management Dialogue management handles complex and sophisticated dialogue that may span different types, like question and answer, query, transactional, negotiation, and review; it also includes capabilities to handle disambiguation and a mix of many different dialogue- handling strategies at the same time. Back-End Integration Back-end integration is the ability to not only easily integrate with back-end systems, but easily leverage information and design dialogue for conducting transactions with common back-end systems. This capability includes handling of privacy and security. Agent Escalation Agent escalation refers to the ability to easily hand over conversations to agents on different trigger conditions, and includes the more advanced functionalities of agent dashboard integration and handing conversations back to the bot again. Continuous Improvement Continuous improvement is the ability of an implementation to easily improve over time as more data is collected. This includes unsupervised and supervised learning loops. Analytics and Testing Analytics and testing refers to the ability to collect performance data, and analyze it for meaningful and actionable insight for reporting, oversight and improvement purposes. This includes the ability to test and roll back if performance is not satisfactory, and point to potential solutions to problems in training data. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 22 of 28 Bot Orchestration Bot orchestration is the ability to orchestrate multiple bots, either inside the same use case or among bots targeting multiple use cases. This includes different collaboration patterns, like bots escalating to bots, or bots routing to bots. It also includes the orchestration of language assets and dialogue assets between several bot implementations. Life Cycle Management Life cycle management is the ability to exist in an existing architecture and development environment with dependencies, and to update, deploy and roll back with ease. This capability includes the ease of maintenance for an IT organization. Enterprise Administration Enterprise administration is the ability to administer users, roles, access and enterprise compliance and security aspects in the solution with ease and control. Customer Service This functionality is specific to the customer service use case; we focus on the number, scope of and size of prebuilt libraries for customer service in different industries, and their ease of customization. This capability also includes integration to other technologies specific to customer service, and the focus and packaging of customer-service-specific tooling. ITSM This functionality is specific to the ITSM use case; we focus on the scope and size of prebuilt libraries for ITSM, and the ease of customization of those libraries. Includes integration to ITSM-specific technologies and the focus and packaging of ITSM-specific tooling. HR/HCM This functionality is specific to the HR/HCM use case; we focus on the scope and size of prebuilt libraries for HR/HCM, and the ease of customization of those libraries. Includes integration to HR/HCM-specific technologies and the focus and packaging of HR/HCM- specific tooling. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 23 of 28 Use Cases Customer Service Customer service needs to support a wide variety of channels, both text- and voice-based, and typically targets a diverse audience. This use case requires tooling for the customer service organization and mechanisms to escalate to and involve human agents in operationalization. IT Service Desk IT service desk focuses on diagnostic conversations leading to preferrably automated resolution of a user’s problem. This use case requires leveraging of back-end ticketing systems and knowledge bases. Human Resources HR focuses on automation of a wide array of employee-focused informational and transactional conversations. Voice Bot in Call Center This use case is specifically automating voice phone calls in a call center with existing IVR and telephony systems in place. Orchestration of Multiple Employee-Facing Bots This use case is orchestration of many employee-facing bots for a variety of tasks. Each bot might be owned by different parts of the business, thus the orchestration is not only in how employees interact, but also in how they are maintained and operationalized. Vendors Added and Dropped As this Critical Capabilities is new research, no vendors have been added or dropped. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 24 of 28 Inclusion Criteria Table 1: Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases (Enlarged table in Appendix) This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products/services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance for specific product/service use cases. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 25 of 28 Each of the products/services that meet our inclusion criteria has been evaluated on the critical capabilities on a scale from 1.0 to 5.0. Critical Capabilities Rating Table 2: Product/Service Rating on Critical Capabilities (Enlarged table in Appendix) Table 3 shows the product/service scores for each use case. The scores, which are generated by multiplying the use-case weightings by the product/service ratings, summarize how well the critical capabilities are met for each use case. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 26 of 28 Table 3: Product Score in Use Cases (Enlarged table in Appendix) To determine an overall score for each product/service in the use cases, multiply the ratings in Table 2 by the weightings shown in Table 1. Critical Capabilities Methodology This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each product/service. "Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions. This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 27 of 28 In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end-users looking to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases. The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized groups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Each capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated. Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers each capability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed side-by-side for all vendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features. Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor or Absent: most or all defined requirements for a capability are not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are multiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any product; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision. Recommended by the Authors Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription. How Products and Services Are Evaluated in Gartner Critical Capabilities This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 28 of 28 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms Solution Criteria for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms Roles and Responsibilities for Scaling Chatbot Initiatives Enabling Conversation Interfaces Via Chatbots © 2022 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of Gartner's research organization, which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner research may address legal and financial issues, Gartner does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by Gartner’s Usage Policy . Gartner prides itself on its reputation for independence and objectivity. Its research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from any third party. For further information, see " Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity ." This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 1A of 6A Table 1: Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases Channel Integration 10% 5% 5% 4% 7% Natural Language Understanding 5% 8% 10% 5% 9% Voice Capabilities 10% 3% 3% 25% 3% Dialogue Management 10% 9% 10% 10% 5% Back-End Integration 4% 15% 10% 3% 10% Agent Escalation 10% 10% 5% 10% 5% Continuous Improvement 5% 5% 5% 5% 5% Analytics and Testing 7% 5% 5% 7% 5% Bot Orchestration 3% 4% 9% 4% 40% Life Cycle Management 7% 4% 4% 4% 7% Enterprise Administration 4% 7% 4% 3% 4% Critical Capabilities Customer Service IT Service Desk Human Resources Voice Bot in Call Center Orchestration of Multiple Employee-Facing Bots This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 2A of 6A Source: Gartner (March 2022) Customer Service 25% 0% 0% 20% 0% ITSM 0% 25% 0% 0% 0% HR/HCM 0% 0% 30% 0% 0% As of January 2021 Critical Capabilities Customer Service IT Service Desk Human Resources Voice Bot in Call Center Orchestration of Multiple Employee-Facing Bots This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 3A of 6A Table 2: Product/Service Rating on Critical Capabilities Channel Integration 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.0 4.0 3.0 3.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 2.5 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 Natural Language Understandin g 3.0 3.5 2.0 3.0 4.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.5 3.3 4.0 4.0 3.0 3.5 2.5 3.5 Voice Capabilities 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.5 4.0 3.0 2.5 3.0 4.5 4.0 3.0 4.5 4.5 3.5 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 2.5 3.0 Dialogue Management 3.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 4.5 4.0 4.0 4.5 3.0 2.5 3.5 2.8 2.8 3.0 3.0 Back-End Integration 3.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 3.8 3.5 3.0 4.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 4.0 3.5 2.5 2.5 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 Critical Capabilities [24]7.ai Aisera Aivo Amazon Web Services Amelia Avaamo boost.ai Cognigy Google IBM Kore.ai Omilia OneReach.ai Openstream.ai Oracle Rasa Senseforth Sinch SmarTek21 Verint Yellow.ai This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 4A of 6A Source: Gartner (March 2022) Agent Escalation 4.0 3.0 2.5 2.5 4.3 3.5 3.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 Continuous Improvement 3.5 2.5 2.5 3.0 4.3 4.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 3.5 4.0 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.3 3.5 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 Analytics and Testing 4.0 3.5 2.5 3.0 3.8 3.3 3.5 3.0 3.3 3.5 4.0 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.3 3.5 2.5 3.5 3.0 3.0 3.5 Bot Orchestration 3.5 3.5 2.0 3.0 3.5 3.8 3.5 4.0 2.5 2.5 4.0 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.5 3.3 2.5 2.5 3.0 3.0 4.0 Life Cycle Management 4.0 3.0 2.5 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.0 4.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.5 4.0 3.0 3.5 4.0 3.0 2.8 3.0 3.0 3.0 Enterprise Administratio n 3.0 3.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.0 3.3 3.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 Customer Service 4.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 4.0 3.5 3.3 3.0 4.0 2.5 3.0 4.0 3.5 ITSM 1.5 4.0 2.5 2.5 4.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 2.5 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 2.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 3.0 3.5 HR/HCM 1.5 3.0 2.0 2.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 2.5 3.0 3.5 1.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 2.5 1.0 3.5 2.0 2.5 3.5 As of January 2021 This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 5A of 6A Table 3: Product Score in Use Cases Customer Service 3.60 2.98 2.74 2.73 3.82 3.42 3.12 3.54 3.42 3.35 3.71 3.82 3.99 3.43 3.21 3.09 3.23 2.84 3.11 3.18 3.31 IT Service Desk 2.95 3.36 2.54 2.77 3.97 3.36 3.30 3.61 2.91 3.16 3.69 3.49 3.83 3.41 3.32 2.95 2.98 3.07 3.19 2.94 3.36 Human Resources 2.83 3.15 2.36 2.61 3.52 3.35 3.33 3.65 2.89 3.13 3.73 3.03 3.79 3.54 3.34 2.96 2.41 3.08 2.77 2.79 3.42 Voice Bot in Call Center 3.60 3.01 2.65 2.68 3.88 3.38 3.05 3.42 3.57 3.45 3.60 3.91 4.07 3.51 3.18 3.09 3.21 2.87 3.15 3.06 3.26 Orchestration of Multiple Employee- Facing Bots 3.46 3.27 2.35 2.94 3.65 3.59 3.30 3.80 2.87 2.98 3.86 3.61 3.95 3.45 3.35 3.24 2.81 2.78 3.09 2.95 3.58 As of January 2021 Use Cases [24]7.ai Aisera Aivo Amazon Web Services Amelia Avaamo boost.ai Cognigy Google IBM Kore.ai Omilia OneReach.ai Openstream.ai Oracle Rasa Senseforth Sinch SmarTek21 Verint Yellow.ai This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.

Gartner, Inc. | G00748700 Page 6A of 6A Source: Gartner (March 2022) This research note is restricted to the personal use of p.bruza@qut.edu.au.