Are enterprise business applications good for more than garbage in, garbage out tab keeping? Some innovative vendors are kicking enterprise software up a notch with artificial intelligence technology. The new class of apps delivers a humanized, conversational experience and even makes smart suggestions to users.

“I don’t think anyone is thrilled to come to work and use enterprise software applications,” said Emily He (pictured), senior vice president of marketing, human capital management, at Oracle Corp.

He spoke with Peter Burris (@plburris), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the trend toward consumer-style apps in the enterprise and Oracle’s human-resource management software, Oracle HCM Cloud.

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In the past, enterprise apps were input-based systems that fed out predictable outputs. “With AI, now you have all these data from different sources, and you can get insight from the data, but more importantly, the system is now suggesting actions; it’s suggesting decisions,” He said.

Humans can spin out these suggestions into creations of real value to the business. “I’m personally fascinated by the possibility of having machines augment human tasks and look at the world in a completely different way,” He added.

Vendors are pushing the enterprise-app user experience through a new frontier with AI tech, such as chatbots and voice-enabled capabilities. This is a refreshing new direction for apps that are typically dull and rote compared to what’s on offer in the consumer market, according to He.

Oracle baked AI chat and voice features into Oracle HCM Cloud for an end-to-end human resource-management solution. It wants to bring the talkative brilliance of Siri and Alexa to enterprise software, He pointed out. Conversation, plus suggestion, plus insight and rapid iteration could increase creativity and productivity in novel ways, she added.

“My son is getting Siri to do his math homework, which is very distressing for me, but that’s a different conversation all together,” He concluded.

Watch the entire video interview with Emily He below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE