Here's How You Can Use Alexa at Work Amazon's quest to be everywhere continues with the rollout of Alexa for Business.
By Nina Zipkin •
It's something of an understatement at this point to say that Amazon wants to be everywhere. Of course, there's the ecommerce giant's search algorithm and various dash buttons, and now the rollout this fall of the Amazon Key program.
And it seems like Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, is already on its way to making significant financial gains for the company. A study from ecommerce platform Linc Global found that purchases from Alexa and Echo users increased by 13.5 percent in the third quarter of the year, up from 7.5 percent in the second quarter of 2017. Not only that, but investment services firm RBC Capital Markets is predicting that there could be 128 million Alexa device installations that could net Amazon $10 billion in revenue.
But Amazon isn't content to just be installed in your home -- it wants to be embedded in your work life too, as November saw the official rollout of Alexa for Business. It seems that the company hopes developers will create customized skills for Alexa to carry out at the workplace.
"When you build delightful, useful and habitual skills, customers win. We created the Alexa Developer Rewards program to pay you for the most engaging eligible skills on Alexa in seven key categories," the company explained in a recent blog post. "Since the program launched in May, we have paid millions of dollars to developers in 22 countries who have skills live in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. And we'll be expanding the program eligibility to skills in Japan, India and Canada in 2018."
Right out of the gate, Alexa for Business users can utilize the platform to set up meetings, send messages and manage calendars. According to Amazon, you can also use the voice assistant to order office supplies or submit a complaint about the office building.
Weiting Liu, the co-founder and CEO of Codementor, a marketplace for people to connect with developers, says that the most popular skills and apps on Alexa have yet to be created. But there are some emerging examples -- some provided by our readers -- that illuminate where the platform is headed. "We're still at this stage where a lot of the app developers are still throwing a lot of things on the wall and seeing whatever sticks," Liu tells Entrepreneur.
Here's some ways you can utilize Alexa at work.
Streamline billable hours
"Anecdotally, [I have noticed people] using Alexa skills to help them track their time to bill their clients," Liu says.
Reference important facts
Liu says that you can ask Alexa to retrieve key figures and stats about your company to be read aloud to you during projects or meetings.
