The UK’s Retail Business Technology Expo came to a close in London yesterday.
Kelly Ungs Presents at Retail Business Technology Expo 2012
In its second year there is no doubt that the event more than doubled in the number of exhibitors, space and sessions over last year. Aimed at UK and European retailers, the event melds all manner of end-to-end solutions for multi-channel, e-commerce, marketing, merchandising, EPoS, supply chain, store systems, loss prevention, finance, payments and CRM. Phew, that’s a lot of ground to cover!
Last week, Multichannel Merchant had a great article that focused on how to improve warehouse productivity. He had nine tips for doing so ranging from creating a picking path to listening to employee feedback.
We’d like to add a tenth – using your voice.
Voice picking isn’t new to the warehouse. In fact, our voice picking product, Speakeasy, has been around for years, but just within the last couple of years companies have really started to implement it and see huge returns.
Take Goya Foods for example. They have been using Speakeasy in their Prince George facility. Within the first few months of using Speakeasy, they noticed improvement in three areas – accuracy, efficiency, and safety. Like Goya, most companies see the following:
Accuracy
Mispicks can lead to significant expenses, costing most companies anywhere from $5 – $50 per error. With that in mind, you can see how the savings quickly add up. (To see for yourself, contact us for a copy of our Speakeasy ROI Calculator)
Efficiency
On average, pick teams will complete their tasks much faster than before. With voice, pick teams move from sequence to sequence in rapid time.
Safety
With voice commands, pickers move from point to point more safely. This makes plant managers much more at ease.
Another thing to point out is that management costs of Speakeasy are minimal because the product is advanced enough that pickers don’t need to go through technical training to calibrate it for their own use.
Not to mention it is really easy to use, as our own Greg Berger demonstrates for Warehouse IQ at ProMat last year.
We already know that Speech-to-Text does well in the warehouse, but we came across an article that highlights how Voice is being used “outside the box”: the place that it is most important, the classroom. The article highlights some interesting ways voice technology is being used in education. Doing this saves money by reducing the need for a translator.
In this case, Voice helps educational institutions meet the growing demand for access to online education. As the Speech Technology article mentions, the alternative is hiring a professional translator for $20,000 per course. As you can imagine, that’s a hefty price.
The software uses speech-to-text or text-to-speech input and another program translates. It is then delivered as either a text or a subtitle, which will be used in videos for computers or tablet devices.
Our good friends at BCI, a Wavelink Platinum Partner, recently shared an article on the possibilities of voice applications not having much of an impact. When asked about our thoughts, we said, “well sure.” But there is a big “but” that followed our response and I wanted to point out some very critical points when discussing voice. The biggest issue is the issue of cost, which all companies are concerned with, and this is 100% true with traditional voice systems.
“[Bill Kuipers, president of operations consultancy Spaide, Kuipers & Co] thought he was in the minority about pick-to-voice technology. “I’m not surprised based on my own observations, but I thought I was in the minority. Lots of clients consider but ultimately reject it (usually due to the cost of hardware, and the required software integration). It tends to be more expensive than comparable RF Scanning devices.
‘Plus, you almost always have to buy some sort of intermediate software system, whereas most applications already support basic bar code reading – or can easily incorporate it.’”
This is the fundamental problem with yesterday’s voice technology. It requires you to buy new devices and servers, deal with lengthy implementation times, a replacement of existing business processes, and an overhaul in training. In that case, who would want to deal with it?
And that’s where the value of a voice application like Speakeasy comes in. It doesn’t require new hardware, can be implemented in as little as 30 days, works with your existing applications, and as such, is easy for workers to learn. If you’re curious about the differences, I highly suggest checking out the recent webinar we held entitled, “Say Goodbye to Legacy Voice.”
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