How Early-Adopter Customers Helped To Develop Visier's "Game-Changing" AI Assistant Vee
In the fall of 2023, Visier invited customers to participate in the development of its conversational AI assistant. The feedback from these early adopters was instrumental in refining and enhancing Vee, the first AI assistant for people data that Josh Bersin calls a "game-changer."
Our Summary:
Industry
Cross-industry (People Analytics)
Visier solutions used
The challenge:
People analytics was too often locked behind dashboards and specialists, leaving leaders who don't speak analytics without quick answers about their workforce.
Why Visier Workforce AI:
Visier set out to add a conversational layer to its people analytics platform and co-developed it with 80 early-access customers, including Ascension, HD Supply, Unisys, and Sunstate, to make sure it was accurate, trustworthy, and ready for everyday use.
Key outcomes:
The early adopters shaped Vee through real-world scenarios, producing a reliable assistant that simplifies access to insight, frees up analyst time, and extends people analytics to many more users.
THE CHALLENGE
People analytics that everyone can use
When Ju Wu, Visier's VP of AI, first saw a demo of GPT-4, he knew generative AI could be a game-changer for people analytics. Visier had used AI for predictive analytics for years, but a conversational layer was a new frontier: a way to let line managers, HRBPs, and senior leaders get data-informed answers about their workforce in plain language, opening doors for leaders who don't speak analytics. Getting a reliable tool to general availability, though, would be impossible without the right training environment, so shortly after announcing its vision for Vee, Visier invited customers to help shape it through an early-access program.
Vee serves as a bridge between questioning and understanding, cultivating user engagement and enhancing data comprehension by providing simplified access to critical information without requiring expertise in emerging technologies. - Ellen Gentile, HR Analytics Manager, Ascension
THE SOLUTION
How 80 early adopters refined Vee
Within six months of announcing the program, Visier had 80 customers interacting with Vee. They took different approaches: HD Supply piloted with about 15 people across HR, Ascension focused on a small, targeted audience, and Unisys went broad, extending Vee to HR, finance leaders, and others who had been requesting information from the people analytics team. Customers helped Vee handle domain-specific language and fine-tuned it to answer the same question asked many different ways, and throughout, their data stayed private and secure because Vee was trained on metadata, not proprietary data.
We've been with the Visier platform for three to four years, so we know our data and we've done all the hard work. Now it's about extending data capabilities into the hands of those who didn't have it before and bridging the gap. - Dibyendu Sharma Mondal, Director of People Analytics, Unisys
THE OUTCOME
AI means people analytics for everyone
Thanks to Vee's ease of use, early-access participants are paving the way for the democratization of people analytics across their organizations. People leaders can ask about anything from turnover patterns to contract-labor usage and get answers in real time, without having to build a dashboard, create a report, or ask someone else to do it.
Because Vee needs no special training, it drives adoption among frontline leaders and frees analysts to focus on higher-value work. And it does so without compromising security: Vee answers only to the right people at their allowed level of access, using metadata instead of organizational data, the same security model as Visier's classic interface.
Vee is power in your hands. Vee, as a platform, democratizes access to information, transferring capabilities from a select few to many. Now, the power of data is in more hands, available through self-service and in conversations. - Dibyendu Sharma Mondal, Director of People Analytics, Unisys