by Carl Bunton 5 years ago 
Amazon Alexa is a voice controlled speaker that has took the tech industry by storm! Now in its second generation, over 100 million devices that use Alexa have now been sold. Alexa itself is a cloud based voice service which is available on a number of Amazon products such as Amazon Echo, Echo Plus and Echo Dot. Alexa is great for the home and can make your life easier, so Refused Car Finance are here to see if Alex is worth investing in for your business.
What is Alexa for business?
Amazon launched Alexa for business with the idea in mind that it would make your work life easier and enable you to get more work done. Alexa can be used as an ‘intelligent assistant’ and helps businesses run more effectively and can even connect to your Alexa device at home. Its broken down into shared and personal devices. Shared devices can be used in public locations and placed around the office and then personal devices which are assigned to individuals. Alexa for business utilises information about different devices, the separate user accounts and skills enabled on Alexa within your business.
What are the benefits?
There are many ways you can use Alexa at your desk or around the office. These include:
-Simplified meetings. Within Alexa, you can use the voice controls to schedule meetings, prompt you when a meeting is about to start, reserve rooms, start conference calls and control your current video conferencing equipment.
-Productive employees. Individuals can use Alexa to set reminders, organise their schedule, keep track of to-do lists, make calls, schedule meetings and much more!
-App integration. Alexa enables IT teams to integrate their device with custom apps and services and employees can also customise their personal devices with their favourite apps.
-Order supplies. Always running out of printer paper? Just ask Alexa to add it to your Amazon cart! It will then read you out the top results for printer paper and ask which one you want to add then just pay for it on Amazon.com as usual.
– Smarter emails. Alexa can integrate with Gmail and Office 365 and can even read, reply and manage emails as well as being able to prioritise your important ones.
Are there any disadvantages?
Alexa has had some mixed reviews, depending on what its main purpose is.
-No internal battery. This means that Alexa always needs to be plugged in which can be costly in electricity for your workplace.
-Expensive. Even though the Amazon products that use Alex are relatively cheap to buy, it can get costly if you are kitting out a whole office or large business.
-Compatible with one language. Currently Alexa can only understand the English language which could be a problem for some businesses.
– Better speakers. The devices themselves have been criticised for their speaker quality and there are other rival speakers which provide better sound quality for the same price.
About the author: Refused car finance are a car finance provider based in the North east of England. They specialise in bad credit car finance and help people all over the UK gain car finance. They believe car finance should be accessible for everyone, not matter what your circumstances. They also provider many thought leadership pieces across the web related t all things finance motoring and small business.