*This post originally appeared on the Wavelink blog prior to the rebrand in January 2017, when Wavelink, LANDESK, Shavlik, AppSense, and HEAT Software merged under the new name Ivanti.

Last month I had the opportunity to tour a facility where  Speakeasy has been in use for quite some time.  It’s always an awesome experience to see and hear why people are happy with our products, and the reasons always vary.  I’ve written before about how ROI is defined differently by different organizations, but this time I got the visual demonstration of how productivity is defined.

I listened to a general manager at the company give a history of the company’s search for enterprise mobility – dating to rugged mobile computers chosen ten years ago, and how they continued to seek ways to extract more productivity from mobility deployments in the years that followed.  One of the really compelling things he said was how he studied the behaviors of his warehouse workers and noticed one very simple productivity inhibitor: while barcode scanning was delivering productivity gains and was easy and intuitive, workers would still look down at the mobile device screen to read instructions in their workflows, and every time they looked down the worker’s feet would stop moving. 

How much time could a worker lose by stopping and looking down at a device screen?  It may be a second or two…or three or four.  The bottom line was – if there was a way to address that delay, it could significantly improve productivity. How could a second or two really make such a difference?  We were watching the activity in a regional warehouse, where pickers scan roughly 400 items per hour, each (the general manager suggested this was actually a low estimate).  Lose a second on each scan because the user has to stop to read the location/quantity information for the product and that’s 400 seconds (nearly 7 minutes) every hour.  Over an 8-hour shift, that worker spends nearly a full hour (53:20, to be exact) looking at the device screen.  Now, multiply that by the number of workers on the floor, and you have the number of man-hours spent looking at the device screen in a day.  Multiply that by how many shifts in a year, and you have a significant productivity gain by adding voice.

Sure, one of the promises of voice-enablement is the ability to have hands-free and eyes-forward safety for workers and productivity gains for their business.  However, consider that Speakeasy can be implemented in 30-days.  Traditional voice application vendors require 12 weeks or more, and some actually require 12 months or more.  Your ROI with Speakeasy could be realized before a traditional voice application might even be deployed!

Watching the speed with which workers in this warehouse were completing their tasks, and how they were able to navigate their carts and forklifts was impressive.  Knowing that Wavelink was helping them get their job done more safely and more quickly was awesome.  Understanding, as I watched the activity that was happening all around, how important this solution was to the success of this warehouse operation, was an amazing experience.