Expectations for both consumer and commercial products have changed. Consumers want products that evolve with their needs, adapt to their preferences, and stay up-to-date over time. Manufacturers, in turn, need to create products that provide engaging customer experiences not only to better compete in the marketplace, but also to provide new monetization opportunities. 

However, embedding intelligence into new and existing products is challenging. Updating hardware is costly, and existing connected products do not have the capability to add new features. Furthermore, manufacturers do not have sufficient customer insights due to product telemetry and customer data silos, and may lack the AI expertise to quickly develop and deploy these features. 

That’s why today we’re launching Intelligent Products Essentials, a solution that allows manufacturers to rapidly deliver products that adapt to their owners, update features over-the-air using AI at the edge, and provide customer insights using analytics in the cloud. The solution is designed to assist manufacturers in their product development journeys—whether developing a new product or enhancing existing ones. 

With Intelligent Products Essentials, manufacturers can:

• Personalize customer experiences: Provide a compelling ownership experience that evolves over the lifetime of the product. For example, a chatbot that contextualizes responses based on product status and customer profile.
• Manage and update products over-the-air: Deploy updates to products in the field,  gather performance insights and evolve capabilities over time with monetization opportunities.
• Predict parts and service issues: Detect operating thresholds, anomalies and predict failures to proactively recommend service using AI, reducing warranty claims, decreasing parts shortages and increasing customer satisfaction.

In order to help manufacturers quickly deploy these use cases and many more, Intelligent Products Essentials provides the following:

• Edge connections: Connect and ingest raw or time-series product telemetry from various device platforms utilizing IoT Core or Pub/Sub and enable deployment and management of firmware over-the-air and machine learning models with Vertex AI at the edge.
• Ownership App Template: Easily build connected product companion apps that work on smartphones, tablets, and computers. Use a pre-built API and accompanying sample app that can incorporate product or device registration, identity management, and provide application behavior analytics using Firebase.
• Product fleet management: Manage, update and analyze fleets of connected products via APIs, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Looker.
• AI services: Create new features or capabilities for your products using AI and machine learning products such as DialogFlow, Vision AI, AutoML, all from Vertex AI.

Enterprise data integration: Integrate data sources such as Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and others using Dataflow and BigQuery.

Intelligent Products Essentials helps manufacturers build new features across consumer, industrial, enterprise, and transportation products. Manufacturers can implement the solution in-house, or work with one of our certified solution integration partners like Quantifi and Softserve. 

“The focus on intelligent products that Google Cloud is deploying provides a digital option for manufacturers and users. At its heart, systems like Intelligent Product Essentials are all about decision making. IDC sees faster and more effective decision-making as the fundamental reason for the drive to digitize products and processes. It’s how you can make faster and more effective decisions to meet heightened customer expectations, generate faster cash flow, and better revenue realization,” said Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President at IDC. “Digital offerings like Google’s Intelligent Product Essentials potentially go the last mile with the ability to connect the digital thread all the way through to the final user.”

Customers adopting Intelligent Products Essentials

GE Appliances, a Haier company, are enhancing their appliances using new AI-powered intelligent features to enable:

• Intelligent cooking: Help cook the perfect meal to personal preferences, regardless of your expertise and abilities in the kitchen.
• Frictionless service: Build smart appliances that know when they need maintenance and make it simple to take action or schedule services.
• Integrated digital lifestyle: Make appliances useful at every step of the way by integrating them with digital lifestyle services – for example, automating appliance behaviors according to customer calendars, such as oven preheating or scheduling the dishwasher to run in the late evening.

“Intelligent Products Essentials enhances our smart appliances ecosystem, offering richer consumer habit insights. This enables us to develop and offer new features and experiences to integrate with their digital lifestyle.“ —Shawn Stover, Vice-president Smart Home Solutions at GE Appliances.https://www.youtube.com/embed/zaWAJN8aKOw?enablejsapi=1&

Serial 1, Powered by Harley-Davidson, is using Intelligent Product Essentials to manage and update its next generation eBicycles, and personalize its customers’ digital ownership experiences. 

“At Serial 1, we are dedicated to creating the easiest and most intuitive way to experience the fun, freedom, and adventure of riding a pedal-assist electric bicycle. Connectivity is a key component of delivering that mission, and working together to integrate Intelligent Product Essentials into our eBicycles will ensure that our customers enjoy the best possible user experience.”— Jason Huntsman, President, Serial 1. 

Magic Leap, an augmented reality pioneer with industry-leading hardware and software, is building field service solutions with Intelligent Products Essentials with the goal of connecting manufacturers, dealers, and customers to more proactive and intelligent service.

“We look forward to using Intelligent Products Essentials to enable us to rapidly integrate manufacturers’ product data with dealer service partners into our field service solution. We’re excited to partner with Google Cloud as we continue to push the boundaries of physical interaction with the digital world.” — Walter Delph, Chief Business Officer, Magic Leap

Intelligent Product Essentials is available today. To learn more, visit our website.

When electronics manufacturer Sanmina adopted G Suite several years ago, its goals were clear: reduce licensing costs, simplify management—particularly of its messaging tools—and cut hardware expenditures.

Fast forward several years and the Fortune 500 company has achieved those goals and more. By moving to Gmail, Sanmina reduced more than 110 email servers by over 90%, freed up its IT support function from basic administration to focus on more valuable tasks, and saved $2 million a year on total cost of ownership (including over $1.5 million a year on IT licensing).

A long-term plan: cloud collaboration

For Sanmina CIO Manesh Patel, the impressive returns are part of a bigger plan. From the beginning, Manesh recognized the potential of moving to the cloud to facilitate collaboration across Sanmina’s global operations. With more than 45,000 employees across 26 countries delivering different elements of a global value chain from design to delivery, the benefits of improving collaboration were clear. It could open up innovation by drawing on ideas from different locations and teams and enhance quality control throughout the manufacturing process.

As the first step towards this compelling vision, Manesh focused on rolling out Gmail and Calendar. Both applications were already familiar to many employees and offered a straightforward route to embrace cloud services. With cost savings quickly following, colleagues across Sanmina could see clear benefits from the shift to the cloud.

At the same time, Sanmina made the full suite of tools available and allowed adoption to occur organically across the organization.

Driving adoption

As interest in cloud computing grew, G Suite provided an ideal platform for employees to explore new ways of working together—with some parts of the business swift to develop effective uses for the collaborative tools. Building on the work of these leaders, Manesh has promoted adoption of the suite on several fronts over the past 18 months. Manufacturing, Quality, Engineering, and Supply Chain are a few examples of early adopters that benefit from the improved collaboration in G Suite.

The company also looked to build greater awareness of new G Suite features and functions. It engaged with Google partner Maven Wave. “Maven Wave has been a terrific and responsive partner,” he says. “They’re open and adapted their approach to our needs, while bringing a core competency on G Suite.” Maven Wave brought the experience of working with other global companies on similar initiatives, and an effective change management methodology that was tailored to fit Sanmina’s culture.

“Hangouts Meet fundamentally changes how people interact; you can put a face to a name and really engage with your team. It’s as close as you can get to meeting in person.”

– Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina

The messaging tools were not being used to full effect either. When Gmail was first introduced, training was optional; some of the teams were therefore not familiar with features such as attaching documents from Google Drive or archiving content. To help ensure the whole business was using Gmail to its full potential, there has been strong internal promotion of Google’s easy-to-use, online G Suite Training tools. “It’s very easy to consume and very effective,” says Manesh.

Embracing collaboration

Today, Sanmina employees rely daily on several G Suite tools, including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and most recently Hangouts Meet.

“More and more of our employees use Hangouts Meet. Our employees often work as part of teams that are dispersed around the world, so they don’t have the chance to actually meet their colleagues,” Manesh explains. “Hangouts Meet fundamentally changes how people interact; you can put a face to a name and really engage with your team. It’s as close as you can get to meeting in person.”

Manesh acknowledges that this is not simply a result of technological change, but a cultural shift as people grow more comfortable with video calls in their personal lives. Hangouts Meet brings that same ease of use to professional settings—and even well-traveled executives are adopting Hangouts Meet, appreciating its versatility across multiple platforms.

To encourage further use, the IT team has committed to equipping at least one room in every Sanmina facility around the world with Hangouts Meet hardware. “We definitely expect to save time and reduce travel costs with Hangouts Meet,” Manesh confirms. “But the bigger benefit for us is definitely the way it brings people together.”

Collaborating across teams and communities

With that goal in mind, Manesh has also promoted several other collaboration tools—in particular Hangouts Chat, Reveal, and Team Drives.

“More and more of our communications take place via Chat, whether in a team environment or one-to-one setting,” he says. “It’s the asynchronous tool that works alongside Hangouts Meet, for synchronous collaboration.”

Similarly, the use of Reveal—a corporate video sharing platform developed by Maven Wave and Google—is growing. “We’ve just started using Reveal to distribute regular video messages from the CEO to our employees and we also expect it to be a big part of our internal communications,” Manesh says. These videos help keep Sanmina employees aligned with company goals and increase a sense of connectedness across the global organization.

Sharing files between dispersed teams

The move to increase use of Team Drives, meanwhile, is one of Manesh’s priorities. “In every one of our factories worldwide, we have a shared drive on a shared server. We’re in the process of moving those to Team Drives, which will provide a big benefit in terms of infrastructure and in terms of how we work.”

“G Suite enables us to collaborate efficiently and create complex process documents that help us adhere to strict quality control requirements.”

– Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina

Manesh and his team have spent a lot of time and effort improving capacity, redundancy, and failover capabilities in preparation for the change. Team Drives should reduce storage requirements and remove challenges and costs tied to back-up and maintenance.

More importantly, the use of Team Drives will mean that files can be shared across multiple sites to further improve collaboration across teams.

Bringing collaboration to the factory floor

The power of G Suite is evident across the organization—from its corporate offices to its factories worldwide. “We’ve had employees creating a Google Sheet, sharing it with five team members, and then displaying it on a big screen on the manufacturing floor so everyone can see the project status,” he explains.

Another key process that is being transformed is quality reporting. The quality team has identified that moving large quantities of required documentation from legacy technologies to G Suite can assist with transparency and version control, routing, and approvals. “G Suite enables us to collaborate efficiently and create complex process documents that help us adhere to strict quality control requirements,” Manesh says.

“We need to empower employees to get the information they need, when they need it, on any device. G Suite makes that happen.”

– Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina

Gaining a competitive edge

Sanmina continues to achieve solid year-over-year returns on its investment in G Suite, and those returns will grow with increased adoption. “G Suite really is at the heart of our efforts to get people to work in ways that are more efficient and effective,” Manesh says.

For a company with a rich history of innovation and service, the expanded use of G Suite is another way that Sanmina stands out from competitors. “We need employees to be empowered to get the information they need, when they need it, and on any device. G Suite makes that happen.”

Scaling Virtual Support in the Pandemic Era: The AI Connection

Since the early days of the pandemic, we’ve partnered with government organizations and academic institutions to serve communities at scale with Contact Center Artificial Intelligence (CCAI). I sat down with Bill MacKenzie, IT liaison for the Upper Grand School District in Ontario, and Marco Palermo, director of digital government and modernization, to discuss how they embraced CCAI to introduce scalable service delivery to residents and students alike. I’m sharing more on their stories below, and for the full overview, check out our Google Cloud Public Sector Summit session, Scaling Virtual Support in the Pandemic Era: The AI Connection.

Upper Grand School District: Answering questions with speed and accuracy

Bill MacKenzie described the Upper Grand School District’s struggles at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly helping parents with IT issues. The staff-oriented help desk was not equipped to assist parents trying to securely login for students as young as kindergarten. Without sufficient support for parents, the District was struggling to handle thousands of phone calls a day.

To alleviate the manual strain, they turned to Quantiphi, a Google Cloud partner, to implement Google Cloud Dialogflow. They were fully functional within a few weeks. The new website provided real-time responses as well as clear documentation to help parents get up and running quickly.

“In the first 10 days, we had over 5,000 hits, and the accuracy rate was 92%,” MacKenzie said. 

The district doesn’t know what the future holds, but now that they have been through the process, they are confident they now understand how to create their own bots to meet critical needs.

City of Toronto: Getting critical information to the community

Marco Palermo explained how the city of Toronto was facing a very rapid and fluid situation at the beginning of the pandemic. Getting information to constituents was extremely important, and they needed alternative channels to deliver that information.

Toronto has been committed to workforce equity and inclusivity in order to best represent the diversity of its residents. As a result, solutions had to be accessible to all. The bot handled 25,330 unique users and addressed 20,174 total questions with an 80% accurate response rate in the first four months. It’s been a huge success for the city, with plans to expand its capabilities.

Personalized response to the pandemic challenge

I noted that even before the pandemic, government leaders were asking for a way to provide more flexible personal experiences and better support outside of normal business hours. Around 60% of constituents want more self-service options and 75% would happily interact with digital resources if they could get the answers they needed.

Google Cloud CCAI  addresses these needs with a single core of intelligence that provides a consistently high-quality conversational experience—human or virtual—across all channels and platforms. It can be deployed on legacy infrastructure without upgrades in an average of two weeks.

CCAI operates with a conversational core that centralizes the ability to talk, understand, and interact, orchestrating high-quality conversations at scale. It provides services in three different ways:

• Virtual Agent AI allows natural conversation with customers to identify and address their issues effectively
• Agent Assist AI helps human agents by providing real-time turn-by-turn guidance so they can better serve constituents
• Insight AI determines metrics and trends in real-time to enable faster and more accurate insights

CCAI provides consistency across every application. It can go off-script when answering complex questions, adjusting human conversation with the capacity to handle unexpected stops and starts, odd word choices, or implied meanings. It can also handle multiple use cases for the customer, such as taking payments, updating information, providing information, and more. By allowing agencies to automate routine tasks and reduce the amount of time employees need to dedicate to answering calls, the solution created cost savings for the agency.

Explore more on this session by visiting the Public Sector Summit on-demand video.