Alexa will help companies with unique new skills

Amazon introduces the Alexa for Business Blueprints. This allows anyone within an organization to easily create new skills for Alexa. These will then remain privately linked to the company in question.

Amazon wants to see Alexa grow into a valued colleague within companies. To this end, it previously launched Alexa for Business. To boost adoption in professional environments, Amazon is now rolling out the Alexa for Business Blueprints. This is a variation on the blueprints that allow consumers to easily add new skills to the digital assistant.

Such skills provide new functionality for Alexa. Amazon realises that this is useful for companies, but that some specific conditions are attached to it. For example, skills will now be specific to an organisation, so they will not be publicly available. Moreover, every employee can build his or her own relevant skills. This is done in an intuitive way that does not require knowledge of code. The proposed skills must then be approved by the company’s administrator, after which they are distributed to all connected Alexa devices.

Business support

Amazon sees the possibility of being used primarily to provide Alexa with company-specific knowledge. Think of questions such as What is the number of the IT department or How to submit in an expense report. Specifically, Amazon has already rolled out blueprints for an FAQ for existing employees, and a guide to new acquisitions that they can use to help Alexa find her way around the new company.

The seat shows that Amazon sees a professional side to the assistant who for the time being mainly creates a furore in (American) households. We have to be patient: despite the immense popularity of Alexa on the other side of the ocean, Alexa is not available in Belgium. There is no Dutch-language variation at all.

Related: Amazon reveals how many Alexa devices it has sold