A leading defense and aerospace organization partnered with AIM Consulting to enhance its AI-powered self-service capabilities for employees seeking HR and policy information. The successful implementation of a Teams-integrated chatbot within Azure GovCloud resulted in widespread adoption and expansion of AI capabilities across the organization.
Case Study Contents:
- Challenge: Navigating Complex Integration in a GovCloud Environment
- Approach: Building a Scalable AI Solution with Custom Architecture
- Solution in Action: Tool Demo
- Results: From Pilot to Enterprise-Wide Adoption
What AIM did:
- Implemented an AI chatbot in Microsoft Teams for HR/policy information
- Built a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) model to handle data from multiple sources
- Created an intelligent routing system to determine best data source for responses
- Developed custom code to handle document indexing and file uploads in GovCloud
- Integrated the solution with SharePoint and Azure Web Apps
- Launched successful pilot that reached 10,000 monthly active users with 40,000 requests
- Expanded the system to cover additional company areas beyond initial scope
Challenge: Navigating Complex Integration in a GovCloud Environment
A prominent organization in the defense and aerospace industry sought to improve its self-service capabilities for employees who needed quick access to corporate policy information. The primary objective was to reduce the volume of repetitive questions across all corporate policy documents, including areas such as HR, Finance, Project Management, IT, and Engineering. To make the implementation more manageable, the initial phase focused on these key functional areas, with HR policies serving as a primary use case.
The organization envisioned a “single chatbot to rule them all” approach – providing employees with one unified interface for all their questions. While this strategy would deliver an optimal user experience by giving employees a single destination for their queries, it also introduced significant scaling challenges that would need to be addressed.
The chatbot would be integrated with Microsoft Teams, leveraging the Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Web Apps with SharePoint integration. This centralized solution needed to be the hub for all AI activity, capable of determining when to use internal client data, search the internet, or rely on a public language model for responses.
However, the organization faced significant challenges in achieving these goals. They required expertise in Azure, AI, and development to bring together the necessary datasets and capabilities. Additionally, the project needed to be executed within the constraints of Azure GovCloud, where many standard connectors were unavailable, necessitating custom implementations.
Approach: Building a Scalable AI Solution with Custom Architecture
Recognizing their lack of in-house expertise, the organization partnered with AIM Consulting through a recommendation facilitated by the Microsoft Partner network. AIM was engaged, outlining clear milestones to ensure successful project delivery.
Our proposed solution included:
- Data Integration: Implementing a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) model to integrate various data sources into the chatbot.
- Teams Interface: Developing a seamless Microsoft Teams interface for the chatbot.
- Intent Routing: Creating an advanced intent router to determine whether the chatbot should use client-specific data, or utilize other language models (LLMs) for responses.
- File Upload Capability: Enabling users to upload files within a session to enhance the chatbot’s ability to provide accurate responses, as well as summarize or provide feedback on the user generated content.
Given the unique environment of Azure GovCloud, we also provided strategic guidance on architectural decisions when certain Microsoft-recommended technologies were unavailable.
Our approach began with the rapid development of a Teams UI, which allowed for early testing and model tuning. This proactive strategy enabled the team to address questions and refine the solution almost immediately, setting the stage for a successful project.
Solution In Action: Tool Demo
Watch how employees access corporate information through natural conversations with a Teams-integrated AI chatbot. From policy questions to document analysis, this solution streamlines employee self-service across the organization. (Demo uses sample data.)
Results: From Pilot to Enterprise-Wide Adoption
The project was completed successfully, overcoming the challenges posed by working within Azure GovCloud. The GovCloud environment not only lags behind consumer cloud environments in service availability but also lacks certain critical features entirely – such as the SharePoint Indexer and ChatBot File Upload capabilities. Our team had to develop custom code solutions to replicate these missing functionalities, particularly for document indexing and file handling requirements.
Due to our efforts, the chatbot has become a widely adopted tool within the organization, with nearly 135,000 monthly interactions and over 10,000 active monthly users out of about 40,000 employees. The success of the initial deployment led to the extension of the project to include additional areas of the company, further enhancing the organization’s AI capabilities.
This project not only met, but exceeded, the client’s expectations, providing a scalable, secure, and efficient solution that continues to evolve and deliver value across the defense and aerospace industry.
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