Project summary
Reducing the number of queries into the HR department – utilising AI to streamline and automate repetitive HR tasks.

Who was the client?
BDO Jersey is one of the largest independent firms of accountants and advisers in the Channel Islands, working with a wide range of clients including Banks and Financial Services businesses, Government and Utilities, and Private Clients & Entrepreneurs including privately owned businesses.  C5 Alliance, sister company of BDO Jersey, is a leading technology services provider specialising in Data & AI, Cloud & Infrastructure, Applications, and IT Managed Services, and is a highly accredited Microsoft partner.

Client requirements
On a daily basis the BDO Jersey / C5 Alliance People team receive queries from the 250+ employees that now make up the Group. Many of these queries are repetitive and whilst only take a few minutes to answer collectively take up time.  The People team wanted to see if they could use AI within the business to improve their operational efficiency by harnessing the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT models to answer first-line HR people related queries.

Ava the AI powered people assistant will be able to extract answers to questions relating to company policies and procedures within the parameters of the user’s logged-on access credentials, reducing the volume of inbound queries to the HR team.

Why AI
The cognitive ability of Generative AI (GenAI) is proving to be a powerful tool and capableof revolutionising business operations and driving efficiencies. However, the successful integration of GenAI into everyday work requires a fundamental shift in the mindset and behaviour of employees. Before creating an AI-enabled app organisations need to understand what value the app will bring to its intended audience and what resources will be required to maintain it.

What did the project involve?
As a leader in managed data and AI services we wanted to lead by example and use AI to make efficiencies within our own business.   A clear initial use guess was identified within the People team, who deal with a high volume of inbound queries from employees that are answered within the company’s various policy documents.

Collaborating closely with the People team we developed a ChatGPT-style assistant that made use of a GPT4 model hosted securely within Azure’s Open AI framework, within the organisation’s Azure tenant.  We provided the model with access to our company’s policies and procedures documents and the Data & AI team worked hard to engineer the assistant to provide concise responses in the context of the logged in user.

Once the concept and value to the organisation had been proven, the team worked to build a familiar Chat-GPT style interface for Ava and then to release the assistant to the wider organisation.

Project success
Ava our AI powered HR assist tool was introduced to staff at the end of 2023 and we are already seeing a significant reduction of queries coming through to the HR people team as staff are embracing using Ava as a first port of call for generic queries.

Additional use cases are now being developed including providing Ava with access to information surrounding health care, pension and other employee benefit so to answer queries in these areas; and also carrying out tasks like booking holidays and logging sickness requests.

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For more information about our Data and AI Services, get in touch:
Email enquiries@c5alliance.com or call +44 1534 633733