This article was first published on VentureBeat

Terrible user interface and complex designs have plagued enterprise tools for decades. These tools are not only boring and bulky, but most of them require hours of training, onboarding, and whatnot before you can actually start using them. You end up losing crucial time just figuring out the basic workflow. This is 2016, and there ought to be a better way for enterprise businesses to get work done quickly and efficiently. The good news is it looks like bots might be the answer.

Chatbots and artificial intelligence together represent a small but significant step in revolutionizing the way enterprise solutions are supposed to work, making them simple, intuitive, and engaging. Bots have the ability to take away the challenges that come with accessing a new enterprise application by simplifying most of the use cases — creating user-friendly interactions that are not only effective but are also a lot more fun. What makes bots and AI special is that they can easily be integrated into many of the existing communication platforms that businesses already use, to give an in-app experience to their users.

A typical enterprise business is composed of many areas, but at the core of any business is HR — or you could say People Management. HR, as an industry, has evolved tremendously in the last few years, but until recently there has been little innovation in HR software. Within the huge space that is HR, you find sections like Recruitment, Performance Management, Employee Engagement, Administration, Compensation, and Benefits. Let’s take Performance Management as an example and see how bots can really simplify the whole process.

Annual performance reviews, the most difficult and most important aspect of a manager’s role, form the biggest chunk of the performance management process. The current process is simply too cumbersome. Organizations end up spending weeks, or even months, conducting these reviews. Employees have to fill out long questionnaires, surveys, and forms as part of this process, and the data that is captured is often out of date and ineffective.

There is a need for a simple, automated, and artificial intelligence solution that can facilitate real-time feedback collection. And that’s where bots can add tremendous value. The conversational interface design of the bot makes it a perfect solution to quickly collect feedback from employees in the most transparent way possible. Instead of forms, employees share their feedback through chat, which has proven to be a very effective way of ensuring maximum participation from the millennial generation. And the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities built into bots can help managers get valuable insights into employee’s performance.

Our bot at Engazify automatically captures positive feedback from team conversations and also encourages employees to share feedback with their peers, based on the company core values. No filling out forms, no processes, no boring emails — plus everything happens in real time and inside a chat interface. The data that is captured is also delivered immediately to managers through an employee performance trend report.

This is just one example of a bot revolution waiting to happen in the HR space. There are many other possible use cases, such as simplifying the recruitment process through artificial intelligence, managing expenses and payroll through a simple bot, or even managing the complete onboarding flow for new hires through a bot interaction.

The possibilities are endless, and the market is ripe for innovation. It will be interesting to see how this space evolves in the coming years.