Skeptical that Voice Automation Technology Can Do Something AI and Other Technology Can’t? See If You Believe After Hearing This.

I've got four real-world stories from manufacturers and retailers who were fed up with their legacy voice technologies and how much time workers were spending manually interacting with mobile devices.

Many people I've worked with have found on-device voice technology far faster and easier to deploy and scale as well since it typically doesn't require the same outdated code or infrastructure as older voice technology platforms. (I'm talking specifically about the voice technology used to automate mobile workflows, not just direct picking.)

You don't have to fight battles to get it to fit your workflows when you use on-device workflow-automating voice technology. This type of voice technology uses built-in intelligence and language modeling to conform to your specific workflows, with no voice training or complicated configuration required. All you have to do is load the device run time license on the handheld, download the two small files that are generated by the SDK for each workflow, and you are ready to deploy. No middleware changes, no warehouse management system (WMS) upgrades. It's all on the mobile device.

However, after my last blog post, many people called me up trying to call my bluff. They felt that the notion of voice automation technology was too good to be true - that I had overhyped it in some way.

"It sounds too good to be true," some people tell me. "If it was so great, why isn't everyone using it yet? Why am I not hearing more about it?"

Well, I think part of the reason why it's not talked about more is because most voice technology providers don't offer this option, so they aren't going to talk about something that's going to displace the legacy voice technologies they offer.

(I, of course, talk about it because our team at AccuSpeechMobile helped pioneer this innovative approach to voice enablement of mobile workflows.)

However, taking my sales hat off for a moment and just putting on my technologist and problem-solver hats, I think it's interesting that more voice technology companies haven't innovated more to solve the problems that legacy voice software caused and the business problems they never really solved.

Why weren't more people trying to take familiar technology and make it better? Zebra does it all the time. They didn't just create a set of corded barcode scanners and call it a day. They have continuously innovated around barcode scanning to ensure the technology's capability was accessible to all and utilized to the fullest extent. Same with mobile computers, printers, RFID and vision technology.

There's a lot of talk online about how AI, robotics, digital twins, IoT and other newer technologies are going to help solve decades-old business problems. Yet, many of these technologies are still nascent, maybe entering the proof-of-concept stage, not yet proven in many cases to do what they promise to do.

While over in the wings, we have voice technology, a proven automation utility, that enables us to automate every one of the button pushes and screen swipes that are required for data collection, sharing, and validation on mobile devices, wearables, PCs, laptops, tablets, and even barcode scanners. We have a very simple way right now to get people working faster, help them make fewer mistakes, get clean data flowing into your system, and tear down the walls that both your operations and IT teams are banging their heads against. We have a way to create a heads up, hands free, automated mobile workflow, whether data is being collected via barcode scanners, RFID readers, or human input.

Why aren't we talking more about that? Why isn't voice automation technology getting the credit it deserves for doing what other technologies can't do (at least not yet)?

Well, there isn't a good reason other than the fact that my team and I haven't been sharing enough about the good things voice automation technology has been doing for many years now behind the scenes for major established brands and fast-growing companies alike. So, that changes today with me sharing the below stories.

Where I've Seen Device-Based Voice Automation of Mobile Workflows Have the Greatest Impact

We've been working with a major national retailer of outdoor recreation products that owns and operates stores across the U.S. for quite a while on voice-directed automation of mobile workflows. The company was one of the first to embrace e-commerce years ago, converting a successful catalog business into an online ordering and home delivery business model.

The move into e-commerce was a huge success but keeping up with tens of thousands of daily orders proved to be a massive undertaking. Over time, the company ended up needing 15 different mobile apps to manage all its fulfillment, inventory management, picking, packing, and shipping processes. Those apps worked together with the retailer's fulfillment software and warehouse management system (WMS) to mobilize all workflows and transactions.

However, even with all those mobile apps and an extensive tech stack, company leaders said its team just couldn't work as productively and efficiently as needed to keep up with customer orders and meet its own fulfillment timelines and quality standards. Adding to that, the addition of 2,500 seasonal workers every year slowed down productivity because each new employee would have to work with an experienced picker - a picker who would otherwise be able to zip through projects at their pace versus the new employee's learning pace.

So, we showed them a better way.

By adding a voice training mode to their existing mobile devices and software, the new employees could just put on a headset and go. Training went from 12 weeks to four weeks. Errors that were an expectation from the seasonal workers disappeared as the voice-directed workflow with automation eliminated the manual input mistakes. By adding voice and eliminating physical inputs, training issues and errors all but disappeared.

So, the retailer's operations team started looking at whether there was a different way to guide all workers through tasks and facilitate faster data entry, and voice automation came up again. They wanted to drastically remove how much manual button pushing and screen swiping workers were doing so they could keep their heads up and hands free as much as possible.

We proposed an on-device voice technology solution like the one I described in my last blog post. It would allow workers to verbally communicate with the workflow software they were using to input or retrieve information as they were picking items, packing orders, putting away new inventory, stocking shelves, conducting inventory, and more. So, the warehouse, DC, or store associate would speak simple voice commands, and the on-device software would then automatically convert those verbal inputs or commands into automated keystrokes, function keys, app interactions, and transactions.

For example, a warehouse associate who's conducting inventory can now say "exception" and "open another session," and - on their handheld or wearable device, have the exception screen automatically come up with the barcodes and quantities preloaded. The voice-enabled application will then ask the user if the information on the screen is correct (based on what they're seeing on the shelf). If the warehouse associate verbally responds with, "Yes," then the on-device voice software will close that session and go right back to where the associate was before in the workflow.

The retailer's operations team loved it. So did the IT team, as the on-device voice automation technology meant the operations team could do anything they wanted with this software, and it wouldn't result in this massive project that IT would have to somehow manage.

We spent the next few weeks working with both the operations and IT teams to automate the workflows through voice commands wherever it made the most sense in those flows. Not just for inventory or fulfillment-related processes such as picking, packing and shipping, either. They ended up automating every single inbound, outbound, inventory, and customer service mobile workflow across its entire business operation from the supply chain to stores. Every workflow was now a heads-up, essentially hands-free speech-to-text/text-to-speech user experience. All workers had to do was talk and listen to the software running on the device to get data on the device and get the device to do what they wanted.

If you already use voice technology across your operations, this may seem like nothing new. But the approach this retailer took to enable those voice-directed mobile workflows - to automate the workflows with voice - is new in the sense that it's fully facilitated using a single voice app running directly on all mobile devices. Instead of adding a voice server and more infrastructure to its already complex technology footprint, the retailer's operations and IT teams were able to keep things much simpler and quickly set up all the voice-automated mobile workflows it needed. They could match all their existing workflows and processes without spending time or money on external servers or infrastructure maintenance and support.

Most importantly, by voice-enabling their workflows with device-based automation software, the retailer's operations team achieved a phenomenal 600% improvement in picking speed and a 200% increase in inventory count efficiency, all with a 90% error reduction and a savings of $1 million in training time. Now, this was a one-time savings for one app, an ROI calculation can be made for every app that is voice enabled (i.e., shipping, receiving, etc.) So, you can imagine the impact as you start doing this across a broader swath of your business.

But in just this single instance - by making changes to one app -the outcomes were so transformative that the warehouse, DC and retail store teams were able to start picking and delivering orders to customers within one day instead of three days. In the ultra-competitive world of e-commerce, that was a true game-changer for the business.

Additionally, the company was able to reduce some of its seasonal hiring, which often swelled its warehouse staff from 2,000 to more than 3,200 associates during peak periods. But when it needs to hire and expand, its new voice-enabled workflows are now enabling 60% faster training of new warehouse employees and seasonal staff.

Another Sweet Story

We also led a very successful device-based voice project with an iconic candy brand that has been around since 1896. The company now owns several leading candy brands that are on store shelves and in movie theaters all around the world. Business is good.

However, manufacturing all those delicious sweets involves extensive sourcing and distribution of raw materials, inventory management, and production, which requires a lot of coordination between workers in production and warehousing facilities.

As company leaders looked to improve overall productivity and efficiency of inbound, production, and outbound logistics, they turned to device-based voice technology in an attempt to replace repetitive manual keystrokes and transaction steps with voice-directed automation. Like the outdoor retailer, they too wanted a single verbal utterance by an associate to automatically trigger all the repetitive button pushes that someone would normally have to make on a device to input or retrieve data.

So, using device-based voice software and handheld Zebra mobile devices, we helped them quickly voice-enable many of the mobile keystrokes and steps in their receiving, tracking and transactional processes. We had it programmed so that when a worker spoke a command, the voice input "pushes" the buttons to open another session, hit a function key, preload scanning data, push a return key, etc. Every macro was done with a single utterance. This resulted in a particularly remarkable result, where the company was able to save an amazing 111 days of labor in just six weeks, at an average of 18.5 workdays per week! (Yes, that math is correct. I know that there are only seven days in a week. However, if you figure three people each work six days a week - equaling 18.5 workdays - you can see how labor shortages suddenly become less of a problem. The same amount of work can get done that week if you find yourself three people short of the ideal staffing level for whatever reason.)

In my experience, I've never seen a device-based voice command solution produce anything less than a 21% improvement in productivity and efficiency for any of our customers. But this use case was a particularly outstanding result, which led to a continued working relationship that we've shared for more than 10 years.

Much like the retailer's success story I shared above, this manufacturer's huge operational efficiency gain was all possible at a much lower long-term cost to the business when compared to using legacy voice command technology to derive the same outcome. It was achieved without having to install, maintain and support a voice server or other cloud infrastructure.

While cloud servers are still a necessity and still make sense for some enterprise software and IT needs, whenever you can minimize your infrastructure and save time and cost by having fewer servers to manage, it's a win for your business and the bottom line.

Sorting Things Out

There's a tool manufacturer who has six conveyors in its production facility moving boxes down to three shipping bays - one for each of its shipping partners. The boxes are scanned as they come off the line then redirected to the right bay for staging. As the boxes are sorted, a person has to quickly confirm that they were pushed into the right shipping bay.

In the past, the person would have to look back and forth between their mobile device, the sorting container, the box, etc. to make sure things landed in the right spot. Often they'd have to scan the barcode again to verify, looking down to confirm the on-screen data looks correct. As you can imagine, that was a messy process. The manufacturer said about 12% of boxes were sent to the wrong shipper each year, which presents a whole host of problems.

So, they asked us if we could use voice command technology to automate that sorting validation process, and we very quickly said, "Yes" and delivered a solution. All we had to do was put an earpiece on the workers collecting the boxes coming off the conveyors and, after they scanned them, the application would say the name of the correct bin three times, one second apart each time. This allowed the workers to be eyes free from the device, as they were hearing the correct placement three times. The errors went down to practically zero. This was a very simple implementation with a powerful return on investment (ROI) result.

Ready to See What Device-Based Voice Automation Technology Can Do for You?

I know I may not have quelled your doubts (yet), and that's okay. Maybe you're in healthcare or government or the utility industry and want real-world examples more specific to your workflows, and that's fair. I'm happy to connect you with someone who was in the same position you are in now.

However, in my opinion, the most powerful way to see how this new generation of device-based voice automation software works is to bring it into your warehouse, DC, plant, hospital, restaurant, store, or other operating environment and take it for a spin. I want you to see how quickly you voice-enable some screens, workflows, and processes with it.

Typically, this is how all our implementations begin when we're delivering our AccuSpeechMobile solution. We bring our software to a customer's facility and run it on a Zebra handheld mobile computer, tablet, wearable, or barcode scanner. We work with a prospective client to get secure access to its ERP, WMS or other business systems, and then we quickly use the software to voice-command some of the screens, workflows or data flows that the client specifies. Sometimes IT is telling us what they want to test. Other times it's an operations manager or line manager. Often, it's both, and we think that's great.

Within a day or two, we put a working solution in their hands - and in the hands of front-line workers. The voice-command software runs exclusively on a mobile device, doesn't use a server or cloud infrastructure, and immediately slashes the time and effort to complete mobile workflows, tasks and transactions. Once they see it for themselves and realize that it's all truly happening without server infrastructure and with a much faster and more efficient path to voice-enablement of workflow automation, even the toughest skeptics are quickly convinced this is the way forward. Many are frustrated they didn't find out about it sooner and share stories about what they have to do day-in and day-out to manage legacy voice technologies within their environment.

At that point, decision-makers typically make an immediate pivot and commit to this new, vastly simpler, and more cost-effective approach to voice command technology. And that's when the real fun begins.

At that moment, we sit down to talk about how to make the most of the technology and voice-command everything they do, starting with one area of their operations and scaling up from there. We find that complete voice enablement is achievable in a matter of weeks. (Yes, it's possible to get rid of manual data inputs and device interactions that quickly.)

So, if you're struggling to get your legacy voice technologies to support your workers in the way you need them to or you're struggling to manage them and looking for a better way forward, then a device-based approach to voice-commanded workflow automation should definitely be on your list of options to consider.

Feel free to connect with me and my team at AccuSpeechMobile or with our partners at Zebra if you want to have a conversation about it. We're always happy to answer questions, provide more insights and real-world customer stories, and provide an in-person demonstration or an on-site voice enablement to help you evaluate this technology for your needs.

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