New Sapho Release Makes Machine Learning Accessible To The Enterprise Workforce

SAN BRUNO, Calif., Sept. 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Sapho, the only employee experience portal designed for the digital workplace, announced that the latest version of its solution integrates machine learning into the applications employees use every day. As a result, metrics that are typically hard to access due to complex applications or time-consuming dashboards will now be delivered directly to employees without requiring them to conduct an information search. The machine learning capabilities also learn over time which data irregularities, system updates, and business intelligence shifts are relevant to their work, and will automatically surface that information to the employees who require the information.

Access to up-to-date business data is critical for fast-moving enterprises. Unfortunately, too many employees spend more than one day a week searching across their various systems for information required to complete their work, leading to frustration and disengagement. Gallup reported that only 33 percent of U.S. employees are engaged in their work and only three in 10 believe they have the right tools available to do their work.[1]

"The lack of employee engagement in today's enterprises is impacting companies' ability to attract, empower and retain employees," said Fouad ElNaggar, CEO of Sapho. "It's a reality that companies can no longer afford to ignore as poor employee engagement impacts customer experience and ultimately the bottom line. A big part of employee dissatisfaction comes from the non-essential tasks and data searches across systems that not only annoy workers, but eat up huge chunks of time that are better spent doing the job a person was actually hired for. Unlike the technologists trying to find a problem for special AI to solve in the enterprise, we believe that weaving machine learning into existing workflows will redefine how employees work, and will ultimately deliver on the promise of intelligence augmentation. This experience will both re-engage the workforce and unleash employee potential."

Sapho Employee Experience Portal's machine learning capabilities identify meaningful shifts in data from business applications and business intelligence systems, such as Concur, Workday, and Microsoft BI, and proactively notify employees with the information that matters to them. For example, Sapho will notify a manager when her team's monthly travel expenses increase over a certain threshold, or notify a marketer when website traffic registers an atypical increase or decrease. In addition, Sapho will soon release an extension that learns the thresholds that matter to different groups and adapts its notifications to ensure employees only receive the insights that are relevant to them.

According to a Forrester Research report, The Future Of Work: Intelligent Machines Whispering To Your Employees, "Organizations possess lots of data and more than a few algorithms, but all too often these assets are inaccessible to employees ? stuck inside legacy systems, siloed inside disconnected applications, and unavailable to employees at their moments of need. Data that's hard to summon, out of date due to version control problems, or inconsistent with data found in other applications creates an insight gap. Sapho aims to solve this problem by bringing the data and actions of these systems directly to employees via a specialized portal or through notification-based micro apps integrated into other systems."[2]

Machine Learning Tech Preview

Sapho is also announcing a Tech Preview of three additional machine learning features. Key capabilities include:

1.     Sapho Assistant. Sapho integrates with Microsoft LUIS to enable employees to ask their work systems straightforward questions and receive a response. For example, an employee can ask the Sapho Bot in Microsoft Teams, "What is the status of the ACME deal?" and receive the information from the source system directly in their Teams interface.

2.     Recommended cards. Sapho monitors how groups of employees are interacting with their workfeed and delivers suggested cards, such as an uptick in service requests from a customer, based on other employees with similar preferences.

3.     Unconscious bias detection. Sapho monitors all of the decisions made through the system, such as PTO request or PO approval, cross references those based on identity, and informs managers if there appears to be bias in decision making.

According to the Forrester Research report, "Intelligent machines promise to amplify and augment human capabilities at work. Bringing real-time, AI-driven insights to the edge promises to revolutionize employee productivity and improve employee experience."[3] Sapho Employee Experience Portal is already delivering productivity and experience benefits to its customers and with these new machine learning capabilities, will give employees more time to focus on their most valuable work.

About Sapho

Sapho empowers the enterprise workforce with an employee experience platform that improves productivity while accelerating the speed of business. Sapho uses micro apps to surface personalized and relevant tasks and information from existing systems and deliver them to any device, intranet, or messenger. The result is a continuous, consistent experience across all systems employees use to complete work and make decisions. Sapho is used by customers in all industries to streamline their internal workflows, enable smart decision-making, and increase employee effectiveness and engagement. Sapho was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Bruno, CA. For more information, visit www.sapho.com.

[1] Gallup, Start of the American Workplace, 2017
[2] The Future Of Work: Intelligent Machines Whispering To Your Employees, Forrester Research, Inc., July 17, 2018
[3] The Future Of Work: Intelligent Machines Whispering To Your Employees, Forrester Research, Inc., July 17, 2018

SOURCE Sapho