In today’s competitive market, data has emerged as a key differentiating factor, separating the businesses that stay agile and experience success, from those that struggle to find footing in a volatile economy. The ability to leverage data to make better decisions is increasingly top-of-mind for industry leaders looking to get ahead and stay ahead.

Thanks to the ongoing development and adoption of innovative apps and digital solutions, mass volumes of data are constantly being produced and stored as business teams leverage these tools to get their work done. Leaders and their teams know that data tells the true story of their business and that it’s a vital resource for driving strategic outcomes across the organization.

However, a major hurdle to overcome in the journey to widespread data and analytics adoption is the accessibility of data itself. The demand for data, analytics, and business intelligence experts is high, but if organizations want to become truly data-driven, they can no longer rely solely on talent in the data science or IT department. Every employee in every organization needs to be able to access and leverage the data they need to do their job well.

This is where conversational AI solutions that are built to enable seamless database access can offer immense value to businesses, by paving the path for instant and intuitive access to information, for everyone.

Most of us are familiar with conversational technologies in the form of chatbots and virtual assistants. These systems were developed to answer questions and address the needs expressed by users in real time, and are widely employed in digital customer service and marketing initiatives. Building on this motivation, there’s a powerful business use case to be made for employing conversational AI for database access to reap the same benefits a customer might experience when they engage with a customer service or marketing chatbot: getting instant answers to pressing questions, simply by asking for them.

While current applications of conversational technologies have been successful in changing the way users are interacting with digital systems overall, we do not believe that the conversational technology that has been developed to date is powerful or flexible enough to accomplish the critical task of enabling businesses to quickly and easily get to the data that matters for decision making.

In this white paper, we’ll discuss these limitations and what it takes to innovate towards a future where humans can interact with their databases the same way they interact with other humans — through conversation.