It’s possible, and maybe even likely, that you’re tired of hearing about the remarkable possibilities of generative artificial intelligence. You’ve listened to all the hype. How it will change how businesses operate, increase organizational productivity, and so on.
At this stage, you’re just looking for practical AI applications that deliver tangible and measurable ROI, not more vague assurances of a better future.
“Everyone wants to lean into AI,” said Luke Hagstrand, Head of Enterprise AI at Boomi. “But the challenge that every business is trying to figure out is what are those use cases that bring real value?”
Here’s one example:
The Boomi IT team used the Boomi Enterprise Platform to build an internal generative AI chatbot called ChatB. The chatbot serves as a trusted assistant that helps them do their jobs more efficiently. It provides safe, secure access to curated company information through a conversational interface.
The goals for ChatB were twofold:
- Become a valuable asset in many use cases, but especially solve a sales enablement challenge by providing sellers with an AI-infused tool that gives them the most up-to-date information about Boomi, product innovation, and talking points tailored to each prospective customer.
- Demonstrate that transformative AI outcomes can only be unlocked when system connectivity, data integration, automation, and security are at the core.
We asked ChatB to describe itself, and here’s how it responded.
Built on the Boomi Enterprise Platform, ChatB leverages advanced AI and large language models, including the GPT-4o model, to assist users with various tasks, such as creating integrations, generating documentation, and answering Boomi-related questions. ChatB’s architecture ensures data security, operating behind IT-approved security measures, with all data encrypted both in transit and at rest. It’s designed to streamline workflows and improve productivity by offering pre-built prompts focused on Boomi-specific use cases, which can help users save time and enhance their workflow efficiency.
The Power of Boomi on Boomi
We do more than use the Boomi Enterprise Platform to help customers streamline their business operations and simplify technology architecture. We serve as our own test kitchen. The platform is the foundation of how Boomi runs the business smoothly and spends money wisely. We call it “Boomi on Boomi” – made by Boomi, for Boomi. ChatB was another opportunity to improve our productivity while also serving as a powerful, real-life case study for what businesses can achieve with AI.
Boomi is uniquely positioned to help businesses take advantage of generative AI’s rise by connecting systems and automating workflows. That’s critical because whatever AI model your company uses, that engine needs access to the timely, accurate, and contextualized data as the fuel. In other words, an AI model alone is not the complete answer to getting the most from the technology.
“Betting on a single SaaS or AI vendor is extremely risky right now,” Hagstrand explained. “The future is multi-model and requires business flexibility to use different AI tools depending on the tasks and workflows. Transforming your IT architecture with an agnostic integration and automation platform is more strategic. It increases your control, adaptability, and resilience in these times of great uncertainty.”
ChatB exemplifies how Boomi empowers AI through different services within the unified platform: Boomi Integration for systems and APIs, Boomi Flow, and Boomi DataHub. The mandate from Boomi CEO Steve Lucas included the following:
- Move Fast: Provide all 2,000-plus employees with ChatB in just weeks.
- Support Hyperproductivity: Ensure easy access to the latest information about Boomi’s relentless pace of technological innovation.
- Ensure Successful Adoption: Become a user-friendly, trusted advisor that employees can’t imagine living without.
- Be Cost Aware: Build and maintain the chatbot on a frugal budget.
- Adhere to Security Protocols: Adhere to the highest security standards, protecting sensitive and proprietary information.
- Be Flexible: Fit the chatbot into an agile architecture that adapts to changes in a fast-moving AI environment.
Here’s a closer look at those requirements.
Move Fast
The initial prototype took one week to build. After beta testing, security reviews, and product hardening, ChatB was available to employees within a quarter.
That accelerated timeline was possible using Boomi Flow, a low-code development and workflow management tool that reduces the barrier of entry when solving technical challenges. In this case, only a few IT professionals built ChatB. The team didn’t require specialized skills like data scientists, machine learning experts, or infrastructure and software developers. They created a simple, conversational user interface on the front end that employees find appealing. The back-end connectivity powering ChatB employs a pair of Boomi-created agents to access APIs from Google and OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language model (LLM) and integrations with internal systems.
We’ll explain more about the importance of creating those data pipelines connecting internal Boomi applications in a moment.
Hyperproductivity
Interacting with ChatB through simply asking questions enables every employee to perform better and work faster. However, the primary focus was to help frontline sellers in their customer conversations. Lucas, the Boomi CEO, wanted them all fluent in how the Boomi Enterprise Platform enables practical AI outcomes for any business regardless of size or industry. ChatB is a “smart assistant” that the sales team can rely on to answer questions, perform research, and ensure they always have the most current information. For instance, the chatbot can help craft personalized discussion points while preparing for prospect meetings and then summarize notes after the calls. Employees can make better-informed decisions more quickly.
Another ease-of-use feature in ChatB is a pre-built library of suggested prompts that utilizes Boomi DataHub’s capabilities. Sellers can quickly get what they need by following guided tracks with instructions such as “prepare for sales calls” and “pricing models” because it accesses proprietary Boomi information. Publicly available AI models, by their nature, are generic. They don’t have context about your business. But ChatB understands everything about our company because Boomi Integration provides secure data pipelines linking the chatbot to internal systems with a form of the connectivity process called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This “grounds” ChatGPT with useful Boomi knowledge, which is why ChatB is so powerful for employees.
Technology sales are inherently complex, even for the most experienced salespeople. ChatB makes them easier – and progress faster.
Successful Adoption
Within a single quarter of ChatB’s launch, over 50% of company employees were monthly active users, and 25% were weekly active users. Today, the sales team adoption rate is 70% and 44% of all employers rely on ChatB at least once a day to accomplish tasks faster and more accurately.
Cost Awareness
Launching ChatB quickly with a minimum of developers lessened the impact on the IT budget and improved the time to value. Meanwhile, the cost savings associated with AI model licenses are even more significant.
Businesses are learning – often the hard way – that AI models can be both wondrous and expensive. Licenses aren’t cheap. However, rather than purchasing individual seats for all Boomi employees, the IT team leverages the OpenAI service through the ChatB user interface with an enterprise agreement. That saves an estimated $400,000 in annual licensing costs.
Security
Security is the top priority for everything at Boomi. Employees only have access to ChatB through Boomi’s single sign-on tool. ChatB also operates in a protected, walled environment. That means sensitive and private company data will always be secure and never available to train public AI models.
Flexibility
Composability is a hallmark of the Boomi Enterprise Platform. The platform’s low-code nature enables agile software development, where switching different assets in and out as needed is seamless. A good analogy is Legos. You can build something in a snap and then break down components (pieces) for another project. It’s the same principle in technology. Development goes faster when digital assets are reusable.
Also, because the platform is agnostic, it doesn’t matter what system you connect. The platform integrates everything to everything. That’s important with generative AI because the technology is moving so quickly, and foundation models are constantly being introduced and upgraded.
ChatB can connect to any model, which gives the IT team the flexibility to adapt as circumstances change. If they want to change to a different model in the future – or even use multiple AI engines for various use cases – it can easily be integrated into them via API connectivity. The team can always use the best technology for the job.
Making AI Practical
For Hagstrand, the main takeaway is a single AI vendor will never live up to the promise of taking care of all your needs. Technology architectures are too complex. However, an integration and automation platform will simplify the landscape and enable generative AI to become practical within your business with the ability to move data through a connected digital ecosystem.
“If your premise is one vendor will do everything for you, you’ll be disappointed because they can never live up to that promise,” he added. “You need to take control of transforming your architecture with an integration and automation platform that’s agnostic, enables composability, and allows data movement across a heterogeneous landscape.”
Sean Wechter, Boomi’s Chief Information Officer, added that while AI is making organizations rethink their business operations, some things never change with technology. For instance, a tectonic technological shift will solve many problems, but it will also create new ones. It’s the same with AI.
“The world is changing,” Wechter added. “Generative AI is like electricity and will impact every workstream. It’s critical to understand the AI use cases that bring value. It’s important to think about how you can create processes that drive not just a 10% or 15% bottom-line impact, but a 10x improvement that’s transformational.”
Like ChatB.
Find out more about how Boomi built ChatB in our ChatB case study.