The AI ChatBot Phenomenon

Oh, it’s just a fad…

When you read articles like this one, “What is the AI ChatBot Phenomenon…” written by The Guardian, you feel a twinge of panic and that the sky might be falling. Our minds go back to images of the consequences of the launch of Skynet on us frail human beings.

The interesting part of this is not necessarily the access AI has to the sum of human knowledge, but rather the possibilities that the natural human language understanding will bring to us. Sure, the machine can reach out and retrieve facts and connections faster than I can type it into my search engine, but how easy is it for me to “talk,” to it and get something accomplished?

This article is going to look at several elements of the TRM Omni Assistant, of which is an AI-driven ChatBot, to illustrate how adopting this technology may help your work teams be more efficient. Our goal is to put information in the hands of our work teams with as little effort on their part as possible.

In the context of daily work life…

Take a moment to think about all the sources of information you and your field teams need to have access to all day, every day. Add to this all the processes and procedures that make up your company’s ecosystem that you need to function alongside. While you may have software tools that facilitate each of your business processes, those tools can vary widely in sophistication and customization to your context.

A CMMS system is just one player in your organization, and knowing where, when, and how it fits into EVERYTHING you do upstream and downstream can be a daunting task. How do you manage all this required knowledge to keep up with your ever-changing organization? How do you lessen the burden of people having to search or provide these sets of critical information?

These concerns are exactly why TRM developed the OMNI Maximo Assistant. Our goal is to provide a framework for you to deliver useful (and often, critical) information directly to your Maximo user communities. No longer do they have to “jump out of Maximo,” to find guidance. Ask OMNI a question and you get answers back immediately.

Ok, I get all that, but how is it used for real?

To be honest, all the different ways this tool can be used are still being uncovered. Reading the article in The Guardian the same is true for even the more advanced AI systems. We just don’t quite know all the applications for this technology yet. Here at TRM we believe that we have only just begun to expose how it can benefit our clients and their users. However, check out the following scenarios to see some of the use cases we have focused on:

• Reduce IT Help desk calls/tickets – User self-service

OMNI appears on the login page of a cloud-hosted Maximo, available to answer basic questions like login/password issues. Depending on your business rules, OMNI can begin the password reset process for a user. Our research shows that this single issue absorbs significant amounts of IT support time.

• Typical Maximo, “How do I…” questions

Maximo is certainly a vast set of applications and functions. The User Manual itself is over 1400 pages! OMNI is primed with TRM-specific administrator guides, references, and training materials along with Q/A pairs to help with frequently asked user questions.

Certainly, the user can leverage the built-in IBM Help pages (if installed) and other sources of “how to” knowledge, but it often is not in terms that are clear and present definitions more than the context of the information within a process. Having the foundation, training, and user guides, to explain the context of each field in a larger process, delivers the immediate need for people to make progress with the task at hand.

If your industry experiences high turnover, you know the cost of retraining is significant. OMNI content delivery framework augments your training efforts and, in some cases, reduces the associated effort and costs. A Forrester economic impact report on OMNI’s, IBM Watson Assistant source technology, found that for every contained conversation, an organization saves $5.50*, and millions in benefits over multiple years.

* Forrester Total Economic Impact report of IBM Watson Assistant | TechRepublic

• Your business process and collective wisdom readily available

The most significant value of OMNI is content integration, the ability for you to teach OMNI about your own “stuff” is the most significant value to the system. No matter what the info is; SOPs, Drawings, Master Data, Maintenance Manuals, Company Directories, etc. once OMNI has learned about it and its context, your users can easily make use of it all from the conversational UI within Maximo.

Consider this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahwince-smith/2022/02/25/bracing-for-the-silver-tsunami/?sh=2f4ce07333e4

“One-quarter of the U.S. labor force is expected to be 55 years of age or older by 2030, presenting new challenges for employers … exiting the workforce and taking the knowledge, skills, and experience built up over decades with them.”

The list of potential OMNI content is long, but consider big sets of information like:

• Process and procedure documentation
• Equipment information in the form of documents, videos, pictures, etc.
• Subject Matter Expert (SME) expertise
• Preservation of organizational wisdom

TRM is convinced that the OMNI framework and technology can replace multiple current methods of content delivery that you may currently be using. Many minutes of search time can be saved, increasing general efficiency of the folks in the field.

• Natural integration to TRM MaxAssist pages

It goes without saying… but we will say it anyway… that having a built-in integration with MaxAssist is valuable to clients as well. The ease and simplicity of providing users quick checklists in the context of where they are working within Maximo has been of great benefit for many years. Now, with OMNI also being aware of any MaxAssist pages on your instance of Maximo, it can deliver that content as well based upon the users’ questions.

Really? How does it know so much?

Users are granted access to OMNI’s conversational UI based on their security permissions. Given that the User is logged into Maximo, and that they have been granted access (just like any other Maximo application) they access OMNI via a floating icon. As you would expect, a familiar looking chat window opens. Let the Q&A session begin!

Behind the scenes, OMNI integrates to your content, learning and building context about your organization.  TRM has primed the pump with basic Maximo training materials, as well as user and administration guides on many topics.  Additionally, OMNI contains hundreds of FAQs on high-level Maximo topics that are based upon our interactions with Maximo users over decades. As an additional layer of support to users, OMNI is integrated with MaxAssist, which are step by step guides to support user ‘How to’ questions. (MaxAssist is a component of the TRM RulesManager Studio product)

While all that is a good starting point, the real value comes from content integration, having your specific business content in the ONMI learning pool. You have significant and relevant information for your users to do their jobs, often spread throughout the organization, on network drives, user computers, in file folders and sometimes in a Subject Matter Expert’s mind. Drop these gems of knowledge into the OMNI repository, teach it about the context, and you are all set. Let OMNI organize the information for you!

Interesting. But what if the AI is wrong?

Of course, AI can be, “wrong.” Does the AI engine return to you results that don’t always match what was in our mind? Certainly. Given what it has access to, and the amount of exercise it gets by Users interacting with it, there is certainly a learning curve. There are times when you toned to be creative in your search terms for the AI to draw up information that you “know,” is in the database.

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TRM is in a unique position to demonstrate this technology to you. Please make contact and we can arrange a live demo.

Reach out to us at AskTRM@trmnet.com if you have any questions or would like to discuss deploying MAS 8, or Maximo AAM for condition-based maintenance/monitoring.