Amazon Announces Alexa for Business to Help Companies Voice-Enable Their Offices [Video]

Amazon has announced the launch of Alexa for Business, a new service that makes it easy for companies to deploy and manage Echo devices at the office.

Alexa for Business can help automate tasks like starting conference calls, controlling conference room equipment, scheduling meetings, keeping track of tasks, or reordering supplies. Alexa for Business also supports a large and growing list of new skills and integrations from companies like Salesforce, Concur, and Polycom that extend Alexa for Business’s functionality into the popular applications and devices customers already use in the workplace. Companies can easily tailor Alexa for Business by building custom “private” skills that integrate with a customer’s IT applications and office systems. To help customers easily voice-enable their offices, Alexa for Business includes the tools to set-up and manage Alexa devices, enroll users, and assign skills--at scale.




Customers can set up shared Alexa devices in common areas around the workplace—conference rooms, huddle rooms, lobbies, and communications centers—and manage these devices, enroll users, and assign skills from the AWS Management Console. With shared Alexa devices, users can start and end meetings in conference rooms by saying “Alexa, start/end the meeting.” Alexa will automatically dial into the meeting using an Alexa device as a speakerphone or existing video conferencing equipment. Individual users can also use Alexa for Business from their desks to automatically dial into conference calls, check their upcoming appointments, and schedule or cancel meetings. Alexa for Business works with Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, and Google G Suite.



Solution and software providers, including Salesforce, Concur, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow, Splunk, Acumatica, Tact, Polycom, Crestron, RingCentral, Teem, Twine, and Zoom, are integrating their business applications with Alexa for Business or developing skills that will allow users to accomplish all kinds of tasks with simple utterances like:

● “Alexa, ask RingCentral to read me my voicemail”
● “Alexa, ask Salesforce for the current status of my team's big deals scheduled to close this quarter”
● “Alexa, ask Concur when my flight leaves”
● “Alexa, ask SuccessFactors to file paid time off for November 28 and 29, 2017”
● “Alexa, ask Splunk how many Amazon EC2 instances are running in our South America region”
● “Alexa, ask Cloudwatch to tell me about any alarms”


Additionally, customers can leverage the tens of thousands of public skills available for Alexa today, and create new private ones for their employees by using the Alexa Skills Kit and the Alexa for Business APIs. By building their own Alexa skills, companies can easily voice-enable the workplace, and let Alexa help with common everyday tasks like providing directions to people’s offices, finding open meeting rooms, checking relevant transportation schedules, ordering supplies, reporting building problems, or notifying IT of an equipment issue.



Amazon is now offering an Alexa for Business Starter Kit which includes:
● 3 Amazon Echo (2nd generation) devices for use in conference rooms
● 2 Echo Dots (2nd generation) devices for controlling equipment in large conference rooms
● 2 Echo Show devices, perfect for desktop use

Hit the link below to learn more about Amazon for Business.

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