Whoever said “practice makes perfect” has never spent their days replying to client e-mails or sending invoices. After a while, finding the appropriate way to say “hello” can even get tiring.
The reality is that most business processes these days require extensive correspondence with stakeholders – whether it is for customer support, hiring processes, sending and chasing invoices, or scheduling deliveries and meetings via e-mail, service tickets, or phone calls.
As of today, understanding, contextualizing, and prioritizing this correspondence is still a highly manual task that is repetitive and time-consuming. This also makes the chances of error or delay notably higher, leading to increased costs or even incompliance. A new exploration from SAP Innovation Center Network offers help.
The Bridge Between LLMs and Line of Business Applications
Communication intelligence is a service on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) that can analyze, categorize, and correspond to written communication by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and pre-trained models like large language models (LLM). It scans information found in e-mails or Microsoft Teams, including their attachments, before categorizing key elements such as their sentiment – positive or negative – degree of urgency, and mentioned stakeholders into a quick and easy-to-read summary.
With generative AI capabilities, the service can proactively suggest responses, schedule meetings, or correct invoices. It allows adjustments in tone, length, and style for an immediate and personalized response with just a few clicks, even during the busiest parts of the day.
“Communication Intelligence serves as the bridging layer between line of business applications, such as account receivables management or HR, and LLMs,” explains Greg Harrelson, product manager for Communication Intelligence at SAP Innovation Center Network. “This allows developers to focus on domain-specific use cases without having to fully understand the complexities of LLMs.”
For instance, for account receivables, the text analysis enabled by communication intelligence can be used to prioritize time-sensitive or critical requests, trigger system activities like creating dispute cases, and leverage suggested responses. In HR, the service can help gauge employee sentiment and engagement through feedback surveys, communications, and social media. Communication intelligence is suitable for a wide range of use cases by helping to reduce errors and improve response times for business correspondence.
Ensuring Flexibility
Communication intelligence allows customers to choose and configure interactions from a wide range of LLM providers without being locked into a specific vendor. “We understand the need for flexibility and adaptability in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape,” says Harrelson. “This flexibility not only helps ensure the ability to combine solutions but also future proof the applications against potential changes in the LLM offering.”
Communication intelligence incorporates advanced, built-in anonymization and re-animation techniques, working to ensure that personal data remains secure throughout the analysis process. The team is currently exploring opportunities to plug the solution into SAP Build Process Automation to deliver the same benefits as part of SAP’s low-code/no-code tooling in the future.
To find out more about communication intelligence, get in touch with us at icn@sap.com.
Thomas Kongats is part of NVT Communications at SAP.
