CHATBOTS: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION VERSUS A PARADIGM SHIFT

Chatbots, the human side of artificial intelligence, are showing significant signs of market growth, primarily due to the ability to make material reductions in costs, whilst delivering superior customer interactions.

From various sources, the Chatbot market is expected to be worth more than US$1bn by 2023, at a compound annual growth rate of between 23% to 28%.

Most of these predictions expect the market growth to be driven by the USA, closely followed by Europe and Asia. Their expectation is the market growth will be slower in the Middle-East, Africa and South America.

It is good news that the Chatbot market is rapidly growing. However, these predictions are largely based on digital transformation assumptions. In other words, a marginal, though significant improvement of doing business better.

These growth predictions could well be underestimated.

Rather than being overly influenced by digital transformation, the largest impact upon the market are those opportunities more aligned with a paradigm shift. This happens when new types of organisations enter the market, which fundamentally change the marketplace.  

One area for consideration are the advances in using Chatbots to handle complex knowledge.

Complex Knowledge is the blended content of regulatory, statutory, policy, legal and procedural practices. Typically, complex knowledge is represented in pages and pages of content, which, as reported earlier, is no longer fit for purpose.  

Complex knowledge is a fertile ground for the growth of intangibles. There is now the potential for Chatbots to become working and measurable knowledge assets, a new form of intellectual capital. This new generation of capability, in retrospect, will make knowledge management, though out of vogue, look archaic and far too simplistic.  

One of the dimensions of Chatbot value derived from these knowledge assets will be in the form of dialogue-data, which is a new type of Big Data, covering structured, semi-structured and unstructured elements.

The ability to automatically understand emergent conversational trends of choices, pathways and outcomes related to complex knowledge is simply a game changer. It is an enabler for collapsing the time-to-market and collapsing the time-to-evolve.

Time-to-Market

Chatbots can be deployed across all digital touchpoints and devices, via text or voice.

Chatbots can handle real-time language translation.

Chatbots can orchestrate the way work flows and the way data is collected and processed.

This changes the socioeconomic models for time-to-market, including provisioning conversation-as-a-service globally.

Time-to-Evolve

The real-time capture and analysis of conversations is a shift to real-time emergent evidence, at scale.

The implications of sensing early and responding quickly will accelerate innovation, whilst increasing market complexity, velocity and volatility. Oddly enough, this may accelerate the growth of employment worldwide, contrary to current conventional thinking that artificial intelligence reduces the number of jobs available.

Measurable Intangibles

Chatbots that simplify and streamline complex knowledge is a paradigm shift towards the growth of intangibles as earning and measurable knowledge assets.

A Paradigm Shift in the Making

Chatbots that are measurable and earning knowledge assets fundamentally change the way we think about the time-to-market and time-to-evolve.

This has all the makings of a paradigm shift that at scale changes all public sectors and all industries. If this scenario proves true, then the Chatbot market growth predictions are erring on the conservative side.