Rise SA Business Solutions has launched Rise Socrates, an AI assistant built into two of its business software products. The company said the assistant is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The assistant works inside the 1C environment, a business software platform. Users can ask questions in their own words and get answers drawn from their own business system, according to the company.
“Business software should make everyday work easier, not add another layer of complexity,” said Ilia Shikhov, the founder of Rise SA Business Solutions, in comments reported by ITWeb.
“We want users to spend less time looking for information and more time focusing on their actual work. That’s the idea behind Rise Socrates,” Shikhov said.
Rise Socrates is available in Rise Business and Rise School Management. Rise Business is a warehouse and distribution management system. Rise School Management is a software package for running schools.
The company said the assistant can read each customer’s own system settings and source code, including changes made for that customer. The code is kept in a separate folder. The assistant can only read it and cannot change it, Rise SA said.
When it answers questions about business data, the assistant uses the permissions of the person who is logged in. Rise SA said it can only see information that user is allowed to see. Customer data is hosted on Rise SA’s public cloud.
Rise SA said its own consultants measured how the tool performed. On average, experienced consultants found answers 4.5 times faster with Rise Socrates, the company said.
For users who know the system less well, the assistant can answer questions based on how the system is set up, according to the company. It supports several languages, including English, German and Afrikaans.
Elena Pinchus, a 1C consultant at the company, said she used the assistant to prepare a Rise School Management demo for a client. She said she was barely familiar with that system at the time.
“With Rise Socrates, I got ready much faster and felt confident answering the client’s questions,” Pinchus said. She added that she had learned Rise Business by reading help documents and watching online videos.
Rise SA said it has used AI tools such as GPT, Cursor and Claude for more than a year and a half. The team has also worked with Qwen and DeepSeek, the company said.
The company also plans to add an activity log. It said this will help its team look into errors that users hit and fix problems faster.
Rise SA said the next product to get Rise Socrates will be AccountingSuite, its accounting software for small and medium businesses. It said it may add the assistant to other products if customers ask for it.
Source: this article is based on reporting by ITWeb. Image: ITWeb. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.