Talk, Act, Think: Actionable Science
If you’ve been following along with our recent market outlook videos you’re probably familiar with our ever-growing concern that rising costs will impact future corporate earnings growth.
This Tri-Valley startup is working to reverse this trend.
Overview
Headquartered in San Ramon, Actionable Science has developed a software product that uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to automate manual tasks that, in most companies, consume the internal support desk’s capacity. This helps businesses save time, effort and most importantly money. A few months ago, Actionable Science secured a $1M Seed funding round led by Tri-Valley Ventures and Globevestors, and has already acquired 10 paying clients.
Actionable Science provides a cognitive automation platform designed to automate complex business processes through an intelligent and intuitive virtual assistant. The virtual assistant sits on employees’ desktop or mobile device, and is powered by AI and a natural language processing engine. This allows employees to simply chat with the virtual assistant as they would any human HR/IT staff, while the back-end RPA engine executes their requests without the need for human intervention.
A Cognitive Automation Platform with the Ability to Think, Talk and Act
Actionable Science comes out of the box with three primary automation capabilities.
1. Information-level Automation. Think of this as an on-demand information pull. “How many vacation days do I have left this year?” “What is the policy for bringing my own laptop to work?” Answers to these questions typically require a human support staff on the other end, but with Actionable Science, the virtual assistant can retrieve the relevant data and generate a response all without human intervention. Most chat bots on the market are able to perform some level of this function, but Actionable Science sees this as only the first step.
2. Task-level Automation. This is Actionable Science’s RPA engine. “Apply for 2 vacation days.” “Register my new device with IT.” By integrating deep within the existing enterprise workflows, the virtual assistant can automate common business tasks that use to require the full attention of an IT/HR support staff. This frees up support staff capacity, and allows them to focus their time on higher value-add projects.
3. Workflow-level Automation. This is the real needle mover for potential clients. Actionable Science takes the traditional RPA one step further and manages entire custom business workflows. Examples include onboarding a new employee from recruiting through Day 1, and facilitating IT service tickets. What use to require a team of staff, can now be done through the virtual assistant.
Actionable Science combines the traditional chat bot interface with a powerful RPA engine, and then layers AI on top. This combination means the virtual assistant can interact with employees through human-like dialogue, understand the employee’s request, process the backend workflows needed to reach a resolution and ultimately execute on those requests. This is all completed digitally without the need for human intervention. The virtual assistant helps to eliminate unnecessary costs, ultimately boosting a company’s overall productivity.
Today, Actionable Science handles tasks primarily within the scope of HR and IT, but the team is working on expanding its capabilities into other business segments like customer service and sales & marketing support. The Company has also rolled out partnerships with Microsoft and ServiceNow to provide a more seamless integration with client environments, and believes these initiatives will act as a platform to access new markets and show potential clients an immediate boost to productivity.
Aligning Their Success with the Customer
Actionable Science primarily targets middle-market businesses with 1,000+ employees, and prices the virtual assistant at $1/user/month. In order to fully align themselves with their customers, they also offer an outcomes-based pricing model. In this model the client is only charged when the virtual assistant is able to resolve a request on its own. For several of their customers, Actionable Science was able to eliminate 90%+ of previously manual tasks, and generate an immediately measurable ROI.
Tri-Valley Connection
Actionable Science was founded by Saurabh Kumar in 2015. Saurabh spent over 15 years leading technology transformation initiatives at large financial institutions before taking up the entrepreneurial path. This is Saurabh’s second time building a company in the Tri-Valley, and he currently employs 25 people between here and India. Saurabh says the “Tri-Valley is like a hidden gem”.
Actionable Science has received funding from Tri-Valley Ventures, whose fund raises money exclusively from Tri-Valley investors, and provides capital exclusively to Tri-Valley companies, enabling local investors to participate in the Company’s growth.
The team is located in San Ramon’s Bishop Ranch Office Park where it counts over 600 companies as neighbors in the 585 acre community.
To find out more about Actionable Science, visit their website at www.actionable-science.com
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