For decades, server-based voice picking companies have been touting how their custom, proprietary system is better than your existing workflows and businesses processes because:
They know what’s best for your business more than you do since they are “experts in voice picking”….Legacy server based picking applications and the organizations that implement them do have customers that have been using this solution – since the late 1990’s…they have a history of providing implementations that provide voice for picking. The truth is that they have one application that’s voice enabled for EVERY customer. When you only have a hammer, every problem needs to be a nail! Recently, these some legacy voice companies have tried to expand and build custom, proprietary implementations – for voice picking, one at a time. Using this architecture and approach takes a long time and gets very expensive. As time has passed, these legacy solutions have become time worn for most agile, forward thinking organizations. Companies today require technology that can be integrated with their existing, optimized processes, not replaced with a decades old, one size fits all server.
Their application has voice embedded in it and personal speech profiling …Legacy voice companies built a generic picking application that would look good to companies new to the voice-directed work force. They then would spend months, and sometimes, years, customizing the code to make it usable for each individual customer to some extent. This core application would have a voice engine, usually a proprietary one (but not necessarily), that would be coded into the application, thus making it impossible to change. This legacy architecture would also require hours of training and a large file for each user…temp users would also have to go through this and training for everyone on a brand-new application, process, workflow and user interface. When this was the only voice game in town, you could claim subject matter expert status and message to the market it was the best way to use voice.
They have the necessary software modules to integrate into any backend WMS system…They sure do. This integration layer has a very high cost and the custom engineering needed to integrate is also very expensive. But here is the most disconcerting part of that – upgrading your WMS to a newer revision is, in some cases, depending upon the module integration, impossible…and in other cases, incredibly expensive due to reconfiguration required to the back end upgraded WMS. This is a cost that never goes away, making the original ROI calculations meaningless…in fact, any change management, even with an unchanged WMS, is expensive and takes months.
Picking with paper tickets is antiquated and you should move forward technically… is actually true. If your company is still picking with paper tickets, it is time to review what a voice solution can do…but first, the analysis needs to be done about the application you need to evolve into. Many WMS companies provide applications to their WMS for picking, replenishment, shipping, etc. These applications can be optimized by you or your VAR/Consultant to fit your business needs. This is a much more effective process moving forward compared to looking at a single voice enabled picking application.
If you don’t yet have voice for your operations or are perhaps looking to move to a more modern voice architecture – you have options!
Your organization can benefit from the following:
New architecture based on the mobile device, not the server can empower your existing processes and applications with a voice interface. This technology is additive, meaning that it supports multi modal inputs. It does not require a server, WMS integration modules, integration engineering or proprietary hardware. This strategy empowers best of breed decision making for what is best economically and technically for your organization.
Your existing business processes and system customizations are important and can be leveraged. The vast majority of manufacturing and distribution teams have analyzed every aspect of their applications and processes. By doing so, optimization has occurred for the best workflows and technology installations. By adding voice automation and optimizing the application’s capability while simultaneously exploiting the powerful functionality of today’s hardware, this continuous improvement paradigm gets a much-needed technological jolt
Voice automation can be added seamlessly to your existing environment. By eliminating the need for a new application, a new server, WMS integration modules, changes to the WMS application code as well as months of discovery as to how the core voice picking can be applied, a device based solution is added to your existing devices, applications and users with NO interruption or replacement of software or services.
Voice is available to enhance multiple applications. With device-based voice technology so dynamic and flexible, voice picking is just the starting point. Additional applications could include, but are not limited to, packing, shipping, receiving, replenishment, quality control, returns and transportation Device based voice solutions can also extend to outside the four walls applications as well such as field services, mobile inspection, mobile data collection, or maintenance and repair applications. A mobile voice technology approach can be an enterprise wide strategy for mobile deployment.
Being able to use a voice technology that is device based, allows for usage across the organization and you choose where the impact can be greatest. We typically demonstrate our technology in a prospective customer environment in 2 days on-site. Voice enable your application, your staff, your devices. Yes, this is the new era of voice. We’ll even show your team how to use the technology tools we use – they’ll have the ability and freedom to make changes and voice enable additional applications moving forward.
No more one size fits all….a dynamic, event driven, device based voice technology that optimizes your applications, automates hardware and software requests – simultaneously, all at a fraction of the cost and time required for a legacy server based system.
Interested?.. contact us..
