Over 90% of Traditional Voice-Driven Mobility Solutions to Leverage Data Analytics by 2020
by Pat Nolan |11/20/2018
Mature markets for voice-enabled mobility solutions see significant productivity and efficiency gains from these intuitive and hands-free technologies. Frontline workers can complete workflows such as picking, shipping, receiving and maintenance checklisting much more quickly and smoothly with voice guided and validated tasks enabled on their mobile devices. Currently, data analytics is a nice-to-have capability that complements these voice-enabled workflow solutions with an added touch of visibility. Soon, however, this will be a competitive need-to-have.
A recent study by VDC Research, Voice Enablement for Business Critical Workflows, finds that 50.0% of organizations that deploy voice-enabled mobility solutions currently support them with data analytics. Another 41.1% plan to integrate data-wielding functionalities alongside their voice solutions within the next twelve months. By 2020, fewer than 1 in 10 voice-enabled operations in leading markets will be laggards in this regard, and for good reason.
Warehousing is one of the largest and most longstanding markets for voice-enabled mobility solutions. A slew of factors - a shrinking labor pool, booming e-commerce, and strong global demand - place increasing pressure on these operations to drive efficiencies with data analytics. A top decision-maker of voice solution provider Voxware says that the company’s supply chain customers typically see a 10 to 15% productivity gain when they activate VoxPilot, the solution’s analytics add-on. That is on top of the usual 15 to 30% improvement seen from the voice-enabled workflow solution alone; it is no wonder that the markets for each respective technology category promise growth.
The data analytics capabilities of voice solutions offer visibility into inventory, worker performance, and system performance generally. The former two generate insights into and traceability of what was moved, where it was moved, by whom it was moved, and how quickly; finally, if and what went wrong along the way. System performance data analytics gauge the efficacy of the voice solution’s usage. Honeywell’s Vocollect voice-driven solution, for example, offers its Operational Acuity software to monitor the use of its system against best practices regarding components like prompt rates, prompt lengths, and device charging. The information collected in all cases is then used to adjust and optimize the necessary workflows and solution configurations to avoid bottlenecks, achieve greater throughput, and minimize errors.
These benefits are critically important to supply chain operations, and their demand will be supplied; vendors and solution providers are as keen to develop these capabilities as much as organizations are to deploy them. The voice technology stakeholders interviewed in conjunction with VDC’s Voice Enablement for Business Critical Workflows all described their solutions as having data analytics capabilities in varying states of maturity, and more importantly, all had more robust features of this sort on their roadmaps.
Regarding voice-enabled workflow solutions, data analytics is almost always a premium feature. That over 90% of organizations deploying voice solutions will enhance them with such capabilities by 2020 despite the extra costs indicates how competitively necessary data analytics has become. Voxware, for instance, has seen every new customer over the last five years implement its solution’s analytics add-on, VoxPilot.
Find out more: For an extensive analysis of the greater voice technologies landscape, look out for VDC’s upcoming Voice Enablement for Business Critical Workflows. To get more holistic coverage of data analytics in the enterprise, see our latest publication, Analytics for Business Critical Mobility.
View the 2018 Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices Research Outline to learn more.