Espressive Unveils Integration Designer Advancements to Connect Multiple Backend Systems Concurrently and in Real-Time, Automating Resolution of Complex Issues

Espressive, the pioneer in automating digital workplace assistance, today unveiled new advancements to its no-code Integration Designer powered by the company's AI-based virtual agent, Espressive Barista. The next-generation Integration Designer integrates and communicates with multiple backend systems concurrently and in real-time to automate the resolution of complex issues. Today's announcement marks an evolution in the virtual agent market?from a single point of contact resolving Tier 1 requests to connecting various tools across the enterprise to automate higher-tiered issues. This enables CIOs to reduce and contain costs through automation while driving an enterprise-wide chatbot strategy that transforms the digital workplace experience. Leveraging Integration Designer, the new Service Quality Wizard instantaneously determines the health of over 2,000 SaaS applications, verifies the availability of on-premises applications, and identifies and resolves hardware and software issues before executing complex runbooks, streamlining the support process and improving employee productivity and satisfaction.

Over the past 2 years, the growing need for cost containment and reduction has created the requirement for virtual agents to resolve complex issues, such as automatically determining the health of an application and a remote employee's connectivity when they are experiencing performance issues, which has historically required higher skilled IT staff. To accommodate this, virtual agent platforms must integrate with tools including Digital Employee Experience Management Software (DEX), AIOps platforms, Endpoint Management and Security, IPaaS, and RPA solutions. These platforms must also enable teams to build their own integrations via a no-code platform to further increase automated resolutions of issues specific to their organizations or industries.

"Espressive customers achieve deflection rates that significantly surpass the competition due to our focus on automating what service desk agents do all day long?engage with employees to understand issues before providing resolutions," said Pat Calhoun, founder and CEO of Espressive. "We are redefining the virtual agent market with today's announcement, by automating much of the investigative and troubleshooting tasks a service desk agent undertakes to resolve an issue. This is critically important at a time when CIOs must increase automation to reduce costs and weather uncertain economic conditions. Our advanced Integration Designer along with the strong partnerships we have developed with companies like Workato, Lakeside, and Digitate make this possible."

Barista Automates the Resolution of Higher Level Issues Without Human Involvement

Espressive was first to deliver a no-code AI-based virtual agent platform that can connect

to any application both in the cloud and on-premises. New advancements to Integration Designer take this to the next level by enabling integration with multiple tools?in the cloud or on-premises?concurrently and in real-time to autonomously identify and resolve higher level issues while presenting a holistic experience to employees.

For example, when an employee reports an issue with a laptop, Barista uses virtual support runbooks as well as its workflow engine to identify whether the laptop has a physical issue (e.g., battery not charging), check whether it is under warranty, submit a request for an updated laptop, order the laptop, and track and report on delivery details?all without human involvement.

Service Quality Wizard Minimizes the Cost of Outages and Enhances Productivity

The new Service Quality Wizard instantaneously determines the health of SaaS and on-premises applications as well as endpoints to determine the root cause of reported hardware and software issues before executing complex runbooks. The following key Service Quality Wizard capabilities can be executed in real-time:

• Validation of over 2,000 SaaS applications and growing. When employees report connectivity or performance-related challenges to SaaS applications, Barista automatically determines whether the issue is related to an outage, performance issue, or planned downtime. Barista then informs employees of known application issues while notifying the service desk to ensure agents avoid doing any form of unnecessary troubleshooting.
• Verification of availability of on-premises applications. Global enterprises have a mix of SaaS and on-premises applications, and the ability to validate and report on both is required.
• Identification and resolution of local device issues. Barista integrates with digital employee experience (DEX) tools to determine whether issues are local to an employee's device or home network. When that is the case, Barista can autonomously remediate the issue rather than creating a ticket and engaging an expensive IT resource.

The Service Quality Wizard not only improves both agent and employee productivity, it can also save organizations significant costs related to downtime. According to the Uptime Institute, over 60% of failures result in at least $100,000 in total losses, up substantially from 39% in 2019.

With Espressive, organizations can identify and resolve potential outages faster than relying on analytics. Further, by automating the work service desk agents perform during outages or other availability-related application issues, organizations no longer need to divert significant resources from addressing other employee issues.

Guardant Health Relies on Next-Gen Integration Designer to Automate Tier 2 Issues

Espressive customer Guardant Health had an initial goal of achieving 50% deflection rates. By automating routine tasks such as software provisioning, asset management, and mailing list management, they achieved deflection rates in the mid-60% range while improving employee satisfaction with IT. With the next generation Integration Designer, they are now focused on automating tier 2 issues and beyond.

"With robust integration capabilities we were able to exceed our initial goals and achieve a return on investment within the first six months of implementing Barista," said Dave McCandless, Senior Director of IT and Global Infrastructure at Guardant Health. "With today's announcement, we will further improve our ROI with real-time monitoring of SaaS and on-premises applications to ensure we minimize the time taken to identify potential outages while accelerating time to resolution."

Supporting quotes:

"Because of the native integrations that Espressive has developed with our team at Workato, Espressive customers can now connect to over 1,000s of recipes in the Workato Marketplace via the no-code integration interface in the Barista Control Center," said Carter Busse, CIO at Workato. "We are excited to partner with Espressive to help enterprises automate their business while enhancing the employee self-help experience."

"Application performance and uptime issues are major contributors to service desk tickets," said Abhijit Deshpande, Global Head of Partners and Alliances Ecosystem at Digitate. "With ignio's ability to remediate and resolve issues before they occur, Espressive customers can validate problematic applications in real-time to expedite Time to Resolution, thereby maximizing operational efficiency and improving the employee experience."

Additional Resources

• Watch the Service Quality Wizard in action here.
• For more information on Espressive Barista request a demo here.

About Espressive

Espressive, the pioneer in automating digital workplace assistance and a 2022 Forrester New Wave Leader, redefines how employees get help by delivering exceptional employee experiences. Barista, the company's virtual support agent (VSA), brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 50% to 70%. Espressive is backed by Insight Partners, General Catalyst, and Wing Venture Capital, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Visit www.espressive.com for more information.