Amazon Takes Alexa to Businesses, Positioning It as a Way to Streamline Tasks

Amazon announced Alexa for Business Thursday, enabling businesses to give employees a way to interact with technology in the workplace. Custom electronics company Crestron is one of the system and software providers for Alexa for Business, along with Salesforce, Concur, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow, Splunk, Acumatica, Tact, Polycom, RingCentral, Teem, Twine and Zoom. Companies can customize skills that integrate with IT applications and office systems in a private way, said Amazon. It’s making available to companies the tools required to set up and manage Alexa devices, enroll users and assign skills at scale, it said. Use cases include using Alexa to begin a conference call by saying, “Start the meeting,” asking the digital assistant to manage calendars, keep up with to-do lists, notify the IT department of a problem or find and book an open conference room -- with a few words, Amazon said. Alexa for Business Customers can set up shared Alexa devices in common areas: conference rooms, huddle rooms, lobbies and communications centers -- and they manage the devices, enroll users and assign skills from an Amazon Web Services management console, said the company. It cited Capital One, Brooks Brothers and WeWork as businesses that created private Alexa skills through the service.