Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the hottest topic in today's world, and for good reason. With the potential to transform every industry and (eventually) many aspects of our lives, AI is no longer a vision of the future, but a reality that is already driving innovation and growth.

At Vocus, we see the transformational value AI can have on our industry and we are progressively expanding AI into all parts of our value chain, from automation and agent assistance to advanced network operations and AI-powered products.

We are also using AI to give our team members the best tools and resources to succeed and last month we launched the alpha version of our new internal AI tool, AVA (Advanced Vocus Assistant). AVA is an intelligent assistant that can quickly and easily answer questions that our team has about Vocus policies, procedures, and best practices, saving valuable time searching various knowledge sources and documents.

AVA is not just a simple chatbot or a search engine. AVA is a natural language understanding system that we’re training to be able to comprehend our queries and provide relevant and accurate responses based on the data we’re using to train AVA. Ultimately, we’re designing AVA to make it easier for employees to access the key information they need to do their job effectively and securely.

We’re starting relatively small with AVA being trained on Vocus' HR and Security policies, as well as our Support Centre Working Instructions and the Vocus Glossary of Terms and Definitions – but we plan to scale fast. Down the track, AVA should be able to handle complex and diverse requests relating to project management, data analysis, and more. We want AVA to be the one-stop solution for all our work-related knowledge needs.

And AVA is not only going to benefit our employees. By using AVA, we can save time, reduce errors, and increase quality. We’ll look to apply the learnings from AVA to deliver better technology solutions and outcomes for our customers.

AVA is still in its alpha stage of development, so we expect some glitches and learnings along the way. But we are confident that the new tool will improve and evolve with our employees’ input and our technology team’s experience. This is just the start, and we hope you’re as excited as we are about AVA and what it can do for Vocus and our customers.