“Technology will be embedded in everything in the digital business of the future” – David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.

Intelligent things are poised to be one of the important trends that have the potential for ‘disruption’ and large-scale impact across industries. According to Gartner, the future will see the utilisation of AI by almost all apps and services, making these apps discreet yet useful and intelligent mediators between systems and humans. AI will be incorporated into various systems and apps in some way and is poised to become the key enabler across a variety of services and software systems. As mentioned at the Google conference, very fast, we are moving from mobile-first to AI-first world.

Welcome the New Era of Intelligent Apps

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that all the new applications built in the coming years will be intelligent apps. These apps use machine learning and historical as well as real-time data to make smart decisions and deliver a highly personalised experience to the users. These apps combine predictive and prescriptive analytics, customer data, product insights, and operational vision with contemporary user-focused design and application development tools to create a highly impactful experience for users.

The intelligent apps undoubtedly have the potential to change the face of work and structure at companies in the coming years. According to Gartner’s prediction, companies will increasingly use and develop intelligent apps and utilise analytics and big data to enhance their business processes and offer top class customer experiences.

The Key Characteristics of Intelligent Apps

Intelligent apps extensively use machine learning to define the end user experience. In fact, machine learning and data analytics are the core components of the intelligent apps.

• Intelligent apps have AI-powered algorithms which remove the irrelevant information and focus on relevant information to make decisions.
• After understanding the users’ needs, these apps deliver relevant and contextual information and notify the users on the potential problems before they arise.
• These apps facilitate automatic execution of tasks without specifically waiting for user commands.
• By applying a very high degree of predictive analytics, these apps predict the user behaviour and make the information available in a very easy manner.

The intelligent apps essentially leverage data, algorithms, cutting-edge technologies, and continuous learning approach and improve the interactions of people and machines by anticipating the actions. These apps are able to learn consistently from every user interaction, apart from the ability to support user decisions, and over a period, become increasingly valuable and relevant for those who use them.

Intelligent Apps at Work

Gone are the days when employees were happy with simple mobile-enabled access to key business applications and data. Today’s digital natives and mobile-first generation demand much more than that. They expect highly useable and intelligent user experiences as offered by consumer apps. Intelligent apps promise to provide these experiences.

Some ways intelligent apps help employees do their work better –

• Through highly personalised and context-sensitive information and notifications, intelligent apps help the employees quickly filter and streamline the most relevant information based on their needs – helping them in making quicker decisions and saving time.
• By automating complex problems through natural language processing, intelligent apps help in increasing productivity, improving response time, and help in real-time decision-making.
• Especially for the mobile workforce, intelligent apps have the ability to provide just the right information, at the right time, on the right device helping the workers get their current job at hand done.

In the very near future, while companies will continue to use their legacy systems, they will increasingly find ways to leverage intelligent apps to enhance their business processes. For example – Simple applications such as emails may not completely go away, but companies might create intelligent apps to add the ability to alert an employee about emails that require instant action or response. The ultimate objective of intelligent apps at workplace will be to work in harmony with existing systems used at the workplace and deliver highly personalised and targeted information that an employee may need to enhance the quality and increase the output of her or his job.

As companies are charting their digital transformation initiatives, they need to add intelligent apps to their blueprint. The development of the right intelligent apps needs to consider the new growth areas, internal and external data sources, real-time data acquisition, processing, and analysis, and putting the right technology to use.

Intelligent apps are undoubtedly paving the way for speedier business decisions, better business results, greater efficiency of the workforce, and long-term gains for all – they just need to be utilised right. Companies which are diving in the intelligent apps now will have a considerable competitive advantage in near future. So, are you ready to make the ‘intelligent’ decision?