Expert Insight

By Brad Wyland
Vice President of Strategic Marketing

Datria

Date: April 21, 2011

Supply Chain Comment: Thinking Outside the Four-Walls – Bringing Voice to the Enterprise

Advances and Applications in Voice Technology Help Your Company Create Bottom-Line Savings

Over the past twenty-plus years a long list of companies have worked hard to bring voice technology into the supply chain.  This effort often included countless man-years of effort and development to invent technology and create solutions that helped make up for the missing pieces that made it difficult to take voice recognition from the call center to the mobile worker.  The early innovators focused and concentrated efforts in areas that were very specific and that would have enough of a market to deliver not only a return on their investment, but also where those early solutions would work most efficiently and could deliver the greatest value to the end-customer. 

 

That’s exactly what you want to do in order to establish a market and create awareness and demand.  But what if the market growth rate slows given the stack of technology (that was once leading edge) and is replaced by “faster, smaller, cheaper” and the market perceives this – once leading edge idea – as really just a point solution with a single purpose and a single device?  What happened when digital cameras replaced film?  When phones replaced cameras and video recorders?  What happened to the purpose built hardware?  What happens when you take your eyes off of the horizon and stop innovating and leading; creating new growth and expansion in the market?


Voice Technology Accelerates in Capability and Accessibility


During the same period that early voice solution providers were fine-tuning their solutions and building specific technology to make their solutions better, other companies were speeding innovation and continuing to develop technology for voice recognition and mobility.  Larger corporations with billions in R&D budgets were developing faster, more open, and more flexible technology that could enable voice recognition to be used anywhere; your car, your computer; your smartphone; your house; your appliances.  They were also delivering technology that was better and cheaper than it had ever been.  The acceleration in voice technology software has turned hardware into simply a gateway, no longer anything more than a connector, or as Microsoft says, “Life is better when the device doesn’t get in the way”.

 

Why not harness all of that technology and leverage it to build a more open and scalable voice solution that make it easy to connect the worker to the business process; to your enterprise?  One that is created as a software solution that is brings together the best recognition technology available and easily integrates to any enterprise business process and utilizes a common dial-tone as it’s gateway?  What if you could put the power of voice-enabled work processes in the hands of your entire enterprise?  Whether it’s filling out work orders from the service van or in the out-post, confirming delivery and invoicing while stocking customer shelves, picking orders in a warehouse, signing up for benefits, or assisting customers in the store; voice technology has proven time and time again to provide more consistent processes, accurate and timely information, and improve worker productivity. 


Don’t Let the Past Dictate Your Future


Because you can now take voice technology and easily connect any worker to any business process, your future is full of new possibilities to create bottom line savings for your enterprise.  The cost of enabling a worker to utilize voice recognition to complete their daily tasks has decreased by over 50% and continues to be driven down by new advancements in software technology and the commoditization of hardware devices that now offer the capabilities of a desktop computer in the palm of your hand.  Your workers are connected to the world through their phone.  Now they can be connected to your enterprise systems in real-time to help drive even greater efficiency.  In the same effort it takes to create a flow chart you can voice enable any workflow.  Why manage a bay of phones and batteries and chargers in your business?  Now your employees can download an application or dial a phone number on their own phone and immediately perform their job.  Job requirements come in many forms, creating a partnership with your employees is bringing the enterprise together for the future.

 

Voice technology is going to continue to develop and mature at break-neck speed.  Today’s Text-to-Speech and Recognition tools that are free for any iPhone or Android phone are hundreds of times better then the most costly licenses even five years ago.  Innovation will continue.  Developing solutions that harness and leverage that technology will deliver greater value to you at a lower total cost of ownership because you don’t have to pay for the technology to be built from the ground-up.  Pay for the value you receive from voice recognition when you use it.  Does this new generation of solutions work?  Just ask the thousands of users out there in the warehouse or in the field every day.  The new generation looks at using voice over a gateway, like dial tone, in conjunction with RF, RFID, video, photography, and other peripheral applications that can turn the every worker into a knowledge expert and real-time point of contact to what’s happening in your enterprise at any point in time.  And no longer are you confined to using a single device; choose the device that best fits the application and best fits your business.

 

The future of voice is going to enable you to utilize it where and when it makes sense for you and your enterprise.  Start where you can find the greatest ROI to drive your savings; but you don’t have to stop there anymore simply because the solutions of the past proved to be too costly and inflexible.  Find the solution that has been there and can show you exactly how far you can take voice.  Push the envelope, with mobile workers that are “live and on-line”; manage without the desktop; remove the interference; put your people inside your processes.  Your vision and drive is why your company values your contribution; don’t let your choices keep you from reaching for that vision.


Final Thoughts

 

For more information about Bringing Voice To The Enterprise, please visit:  www.datria.com.


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About the Author

Brad Wyland is Vice President of Strategic Marketing and brings over 17years of Supply Chain experience to the Datria Team.  Prior to joining Datria, Wyland was the Director of Product Strategy at Seegrid Corporation, the leading provider of Industrial Mobile Robots.

 

Previously, Wyland was a senior supply chain research analyst at Aberdeen Group, Sr. Product Manager at Vocollect, Inc., and was a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at PeopleSoft (now Oracle).   Wyland started his supply chain career in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a Consultant with HB Maynard before joining Systems Modeling (now Rockwell Software) in 1995.

Wyland holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.


For More information, please visit:

www.datria.com


Wyland Says:


The future of voice is going to enable you to utilize it where and when it makes sense for you and your enterprise.


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