Sameer Raje, GM and Head of Business – India & SAARC, Zoom, in an interaction with Nasscom, revealed how AI collaboration tools are disrupting conventional hierarchies, enhancing decision-making, encouraging participation, redesigning performance metrics, and overcoming work flow issues. Following are the key insights.
 

Traditionally, cooperation inside organizations mainly involved planned sessions, video calls, and electronic mail. This approach was often slow and ineffective especially in large organizations with formal structures where information flow was slow and decisions could be held up by access to the right people or information. When an organization becomes large and its operations are spread across different geographical locations, then the need to integrate the various departments and sub-organizations becomes crucial. Traditional face-to-face communication is lacking in this area and AI collaboration platforms are rising to the challenge by offering better access to information and people within an organisation irrespective of their location or time zone.      

Such platforms enable the employees to make decisions on their own without necessarily consulting the top management. AI tools can help to avoid the problem of information silos and integrate different systems, for example, CRM and ERP, and present the most important data in a single and easily accessible format. Consequently, an employee can get to important data or a particular person at once, which increases efficiency and the speed of decision-making.

AI as an Enabler of Inclusivity and Diversity in Hybrid Workplaces

Another significant aspect where AI collaboration platforms are reshaping organizations is in terms of diversity and inclusiveness especially in the new world of work that is hybrid and remote. In the course of the COVID-19 lock-downs, there was an enhanced female representation in the workforce, especially because women could work from home and manage their households as well. AI collaboration platforms continue to enhance inclusiveness since they connect different roles and locations within an organization.

AI makes it possible for employees who do not get to engage in organizational communication with the top management such as field engineers or shop floor employees to get more involved in the communication processes of the organization. It assists in making certain that every worker, irrespective of his or her rank or place of work, has equivalent opportunities to obtain data and participate in decision-making. This helps to eliminate the situation where some employees may feel they are not part of the management team, thus improving the corporate culture.

For instance, in big organizations, a certain department may not know what another is doing. This can be done by AI-driven collaboration platforms that make information to circulate across all departments, thus creating a feeling of togetherness and organizational goals. This in turn helps to reinforce the culture of the organisation, cuts down on staff turnover and improves staff morale.

Redefining Performance Evaluation and Professional Growth

AI derived analytics from the collaboration tools are also reshaping the way organizational performance appraisal and professional training is being done. It can also help in the supervision of interactions, understanding and determining the attitude of customers and giving feedback that can assist in enhancing the performance of the employees on the same. For instance, there are Zoom’s AI Companion (AIC) that has tools that help to track call quality, customer attitude, and even employees’ communication. This gives the managers the much-needed information to enable them to close any gaps in service delivery or sales strategies where necessary.  

In the case of sales teams, it can transcribe the conversations, monitor the customers’ responses, and even identify the areas where adjustments may be required. Such data can be applied for training and coaching of the employees, thus providing a constant skill enhancement. AI also offers performance evaluation in real-time and therefore can assist organizations to make right decisions regarding promotions, bonuses, or development areas.

AI is not only about enhancing the people management. These tools also assist in monitoring of infrastructures, whereby the IT departments can diagnose problems and make necessary corrections from a distance, for instance, if there are problems with the physical equipment or with the networks. This leads to increased efficiency since employees no longer have to wait for the IT department to come and solve technical glitches that AI can address immediately.

Overcoming Challenges in AI Integration with Existing Workflows

Although there are many advantages of using AI in collaboration platforms, the major issue is the ability to incorporate them into the current working systems. One of the major problems is that many organizations have developed various types of workflow silos. Some departments may be using different software systems that are incompatible with each other and this may cause a lot of time to be spent in trying to make decisions.

For instance, a sales team may employ a CRM system while the legal department employs a different contract management system. If these systems do not communicate, one wastes time going through different systems in search of certain information. It is possible for AI-driven platforms to connect these different systems, thus allowing easy access to data by different departments. This means that the employees are able to get the information they require without having to switch between different login credentials or software applications which in turn makes the decision-making process much easier.

But there is a possibility to create new “AI silos” on top of these existing workflow silos. Most firms create their own AI applications without thinking about how they will interact with other applications. This can cause even more fragmentation within an organization and is something that needs to be avoided. To address this, organizations must implement a federated AI strategy, where AI applications are built to integrate with one another across an organization’s various systems to minimize silos.

For instance, Zoom has incorporated a federated AI strategy in its collaboration tools. This lets organizations to deploy their own AI technologies, or use standard industry AI, and incorporate with Zoom’s own systems. This flexibility guarantees organizations are not compelled to rely on a single AI ecosystem, which makes it possible to incorporate AI in all departments and operations.

Ensuring Human Creativity and Intuition Remain Central to Innovation

With the increasing use of AI-driven tools, people are concerned that AI may take over creativity and decision-making. But AI is not designed to replace intuition; on the contrary, it is a tool that can enhance creativity by taking on routine work and offering relevant data.

For instance, it can transcribe long meetings or documents and save time for the employees to think creatively on how they can solve problems instead of searching for information. Likewise, AI can help in tasks such as writing emails or setting up meetings so that the employees can focus on more complex issues.

Managers should pay attention to applying AI in the ways that help to increase efficiency and effectiveness of decision making while not negating the role of creativity. In this way, AI can be used to offload a lot of routine work, and keep people’s creativity at the forefront of the work process.