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NISA-TODAY’S INVEST IN FUTURE USE OF VOICE - Nisa-Today’s Upgrade Voice Hardware Across the Estate
03/10/2011 00:00:00
3 October 2011: Nisa-Today’s has purchased over 250 Vocollect Talkman T5 dedicated voice terminals from VoiteQ, replacing the company’s existing Talkman T2 mobile computers in their Harlow, Stoke and Scunthorpe distribution centres. This signifies a significant investment in the company’s future use of voice technology, which forms part of its long-term software strategy.
In 2003 Nisa-Today’s launched an initiative to introduce the industry’s most advanced technology for order-picking within its Scunthorpe facilities. With paper-based picking in use at that time, the group opted to bypass traditional RF scanning-based picking technologies in favour of a thencutting- edge voice-recognition system, including the UK’s first pick-by-line using voice, for maximum future-proofing. Seven years on the voice solution has more than proved itself, so the decision was made to upgrade the voice hardware to invest in the future use of voice technology. In addition Nisa-Today decided to implement the voice solution at its new Livingston depot, to ensure all the depots benefit from voice technology.
Although voice technology is part of Nisa-Today’s long-term software strategy, the team wanted to ensure the company had the right hardware for the operation. Thus it shortlisted six units to be trialled in the depots as part of the selection process. The hardware ranged from dedicated voice terminals, including the Talkman T5, to voice on a handheld unit and screen-based units. The selection criteria was based on performance and user acceptance, including the ergonomics of the unit. The Talkman T5 was selected, following impressive performance during the trial and very high user acceptance.
Wayne Swallow, Nisa-Today’s IT Director, says, “We knew we wanted to continue to use voice, as we believe that voice is still the right solution for Nisa-Today’s operation. Having decided to invest in our voice solution, we wanted to re-evaluate the hardware options that were now available to us seven years after our initial implementation. VoiteQ was happy to let us trial a range of options to enable us to select which one would work best for us, based on how they worked in our environment, with our team. Talkman proved to be the best choice from both a user acceptance
and the performance point of view, so we decided to upgrade our existing T2s to the Talkman T5 device.”
The voice servers were migrated to run Vocollect VoiceConsole at the end of 2009 in preparation for the upgrade of the voice terminals and to add resilience to the current solution, so the IT backbone was already in place for this rollout. The new Talkman T5s will also offer users the ability to ‘auto logon’ via their dedicated Vocollect headsets, significantly reducing logon time for the voice users, including over 120 concurrent users at the Scunthorpe site alone.
David Stanhope, VoiteQ’s CEO, commented; “Being hardware-agnostic offers VoiteQ customers the option to choose which hardware they would like to use, and we will interface, implement and support it. For us it is key that long-term customers such as Nisa-Today’s, have this flexibility available to them to ensure they get a solution which exactly meets their ever-changing requirements.”
Richard Adams, VP and Managing Director, Vocollect EMEA, said; “We are continually consulting with our partners and end-customers to ensure our new products meet their business requirements. It is gratifying that early adopters like Nisa-Today’s are re-affirming their commitment to the Vocollect solution and making further solid long-term investments in Voice.”
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About Nisa-Today’s
www. corporate.nisa-todays.com
Nisa-Today’s is the UK’s leading member-owned organisation, providing benefits to independent retailers and wholesalers in food and drink markets. Nisa-Today’s achieved a turnover, for the year ending March 2010, of £1.4 billion and represents retail stores and wholesale depots across the UK (including Northern Ireland), the Channel Islands and the Republic of Ireland. Our commercial objective is to negotiate the lowest cost price of products and provide the most efficient supply chain for its member companies, by strategically using their combined turnover powerbase.
About VoiteQ
www.voiteq.com
VoiteQ provides industry leading voice directed solutions enabling hands-free and eyes-free warehouse picking, resulting in a smoother, more continuous operation, increasing productivity and accuracy. VoiteQ is the UK’s leading supplier of voice directed distribution systems, having supplied hardware, software, services or support to the majority of UK warehouses which have voice implementations. VoiteQ supplies VoiceMan, the UK’s leading middleware software for voice solutions. Part of the CentriQ Group.
About Vocollect
Vocollect, a business unit of Intermec, Inc. (NYSE:IN), is the leader in creating and providing voice-centric solutions for mobile workers in distribution and warehouse environments worldwide. The speech recognition software and extreme recognition accuracy of in-vocabulary speech helps customers achieve a higher level of business performance through voice. Every day over 350,000 workers worldwide use Vocollect’s comprehensive voice solutions to distribute more than $3.5 billion in goods from distribution centers and warehouses to customer locations. A global team of over 2,000 supply chain reseller and channel partner experts supports Vocollect Voice offerings. Vocollect VoiceWorld Suite integrates with all major WMS and ERP systems, including solutions from SAP AG, and supports the industry’s leading mobile computing devices. For more information, visit www.vocollect.com.
Vocollect®, Vocollect Voice®, Talkman® and Vocollect VoiceWorld Suite™ are trademarks of Intermec IP Corp. All rights reserved.
About Intermec
Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) develops and integrates products, services and technologies that identify, track and manage supply chain assets and information. Core technologies include rugged mobile computing and data collection systems, bar code printers, label media, and RFID. The company’s products and services are used by customers in many industries worldwide to improve the productivity, quality and responsiveness of business operations. For more information about Intermec, visit http://www.intermec.com or call 800-347- 2636.
For further information please contact:
Aileen Brown
Marketing Manager, VoiteQ
Tel: +44 (0)844 8940 322
Email: aileen.brown@voiteq.com
Web: www.voiteq.com
