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VoiteQ - The UK's leading voice solutions provider for warehousing
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 British-owned VoiteQ has only been in existence just over five years, but the VoiteQ team have been working together for as long as 16 years and have a depth of experience in retail, distribution and IT systems. With a 'Can do' approach to finding solutions to fit their customers' needs, VoiteQ are very proud of their position as the UK's leading supplier of Voice-directed distribution systems, having now supplied over 70% of the Voice sites live in the UK. As well as developing and supporting their own IT products, VoiteQ support Vocollect's Talkman hardware and software, and operate a Vocollect certified repair centre, providing support and maintenance for thousands of Talkman units and accessories from within the UK. Building on their growth in the UK, VoiteQ first doubled their office space in 2003. As growth continued, they relocated in June to new purpose-built premises, more than doubling their office space again. David Stanhope, CEO of VoiteQ, spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
Warehouse & Logistics News - Where does the name 'VoiteQ' come from - is it short for Voice Technology?
Yes it is. When we came to form the company, we wanted a name that emphasised the Voice aspects of what we did and we tried to find a name that was distinctive but also had the name available with Companies House, as well as having .co.uk and .com web addresses available.
W&LN - When and why was VoiteQ set up in its present form?
The core of the VoiteQ team came out of a 100 store convenience business called HealdÕs Day & Nite Stores. We had spent many years developing IT solutions to run our own business, and those solutions provided such excellent benefits within our own operations, that we decided we would look to sell them to other similar businesses. Before we could do that, the then owners of the business received an offer they considered too good to turn down, and the convenience store business was sold in May 2000 to T&S Stores. As part of that transaction it was agreed that the IT function from HealdÕs could go their own way and continue to develop and sell the solutions we had developed in-house. These solutions included a fully integrated EPoS Solution and Central Product Management Solution, as well as the worldÕs first fully Voice-Directed WMS.
W&LN - What's happened to Heald's as a retail operation since then?
Initially the Heald's stores were absorbed into the T&S estate, some trading under the One Stop fascia, but subsequently T&S was acquired by Tesco, so now many of our old stores trade under the Tesco Express fascia.
W&LN - How big is VoiteQ in terms of UK turnover, staff and live customers?
We currently have around £4m in turnover and from an initial team of 11 we now have a team of over 50. We support hundreds of sites across the UK, whether for EPoS, Warehousing or purely Voice, of which over 70 will be Voice-related.
W&LN - What proportion of your business revenue is Voice-Directed Order Picking-related?
The majority of our revenue is derived from Voice operations, somewhere in excess of 70%, and of that the majority is based around order picking, but we also provide Voice-directed solutions for all other aspects of warehouse operations, including Goods In, Putaway, Replenishment and Stock counting.
W&LN - In the UK, who are your major customers? Can you talk about what you do for them?
Obviously the majority of our customers have Voice-related solutions, and these include WH Smith, Focus DIY, Internacionale, Palmer & Harvey, Nisa-Today's as well as 19 sites for Brake Bros Food Service. Most of these operations are standard case order picking, but we also provide Pick by Line, Multi-Order Picking and Pallet Building within a range of other warehouse functions. Our EPoS customers include Smile Stores, David Sands and Sainsbury's at Bells.
W&LN - What size and profile of companies do you target?
Naturally the large multi-site depots are extremely important for any business in our market. However, we are also very happy to provide solutions to relatively small single site operations. These generally have the advantage of being relatively straightforward and having a reasonably short decision making process.
W&LN - There are a lot of IT vendors out there. If it comes to a beauty contest, why choose VoiteQ rather than another supplier?
VoiteQ's experience is key when comparing us to almost any other IT solutions provider. On the Voice side, we implemented our first site 8 years ago and we donÕt just sell the solution, we have used it ourselves in our own warehouse and we know the benefits it will bring, as well as understanding from first hand experience the issues customers can face. Our Voice experience is second to none. On the EPoS side we initially developed this in-house to run our own business, so we can justifiably say it was developed by retailers for retailers.
 W&LN - VoiteQ specialises in Voice solutions. Whose Voice solutions do you sell?
Our Voice solutions have been developed around VocollectÕs Voice Recognition Software and, in particular, the Talkman wearable Voice Terminal, but all our Voice applications have been developed by us.
W&LN - Why do you only sell Vocollect Voice products?
When we started looking at Voice solutions ourselves back in 1997, the Talkman solution was by far the best available, and weÕve had no reason to change our view since. Vocollect invest heavily in the R&D for their products in order to keep them at the forefront of the technology. We constantly keep the Voice market under review, and if we believe there is a good alternative solution we will certainly give it serious consideration.
W&LN - Which Vocollect products are your biggest sellers? What are the specific benefits of each of these? How big is the sales opportunity for Vocollect devices?
We have sold most Talkman T2xÕs purely because itÕs been around for the longest time, but many of our new implementations are now using the Talkman T5. The Talkman T2x remains an excellent workhorse product but the T5 has additional benefits including the fact that itÕs smaller, it has Bluetooth capabilities and it also features auto log-on capabilities. VocollectÕs Voice for Handhelds has particular benefit for multi-modal warehouse operations where an interaction between Voice, Screen and Keyboard is of benefit, and can operate on a range of devices from other RF providers.
W&LN - How do you and other Vocollect partners avoid chasing after the same piece of business - do you have set geographical territories?
What a good question! In short, we don't, and it is one of the areas that can potentially cause most confusion for potential customers. They do say that they can have several potential suppliers all knocking on their door trying to sell apparently the same solution. That's why it's extremely important that we use our experience and expertise to sell them the right solution. The Hardware might be the same but the solution isnÕt.
W&LN - You've won various awards as a Vocollect business partner - whatÕs the story there?
In early 2005 we won the first Vocollect Business Partner of the Year Award, partly for our very successful growth of the Voice market in the UK, but also because of our very close working relationship with Vocollect over many years. In early 2006 we were awarded the Technical Partner of the Year Award partly because of our technical expertise built up over many years of being a Vocollect Certified Repair Centre, but also because they couldn't give us the Partner of the Year Award two years running!
W&LN - What's more important in your approach - shifting lots of devices or providing the right solution?
Whilst "shifting lots of devices" would obviously be nice, VoiteQ are a software solutions provider, and if you donÕt provide the right solutions you donÕt shift a lot of devices. Your more traditional RF providers, supplying handheld devices or truck-mounted devices, will generally only be interested in selling the merits of their hardware. Whilst the hardware we supply is a very important part of what we do, there are a number of suppliers of the same hardware and it is therefore the high quality of our software solutions, as well as our experience and understanding of the needs of customers in the retail and distribution sector, that has made us so successful.
W&LN - Let's talk about your own IT products. Briefly, can you list them? Where is your software developed?
We still provide the fully integrated suite of products we used so successfully to run our own business, this includes VPoS (our EPoS solution), BMS (our Central Product Management Solution) and Logicman (our fully Voice Controlled WMS.) All of our solutions are developed in the centre of the software universe, which is Blackpool.
W&LN - You have already told us about VoiceMan. Can you talk briefly about the other VoiteQ solutions and their benefits?
Our solutions are essentially up-dated versions of the solutions we used to use to run the HealdÕs business. The main benefit from our solutions overall is the integration between them, in that they all work using the same synchronised databases. Many other software houses will claim to have integrated solutions, however, they have usually bolted together a number of different systems and claim them to be fully integrated.
W&LN - How much bespoke work do you have to do for a typical implementation?
VoiteQ have a policy of not bespoking any of our software for any customer. We only have one VoiceMan solution, for instance, and all our users are on a standard version of that product. Many of them will use it in very different ways, but we always control different areas of functionality by Parameter control. If a customer requires functionality that we donÕt currently have, we will build it into the standard product and parameterise it so that customers who donÕt need the functionality donÕt see it. This makes it easier for us to support, cheaper for the customers and, importantly, ensures all functionality can be available to all customers.
W&LN - How scaleable are your applications, in terms of increasing numbers of users and devices, as companies grow?
Whether we are talking about Voice-related implementations or talking about our fully integrated EPoS-based implementations, our solutions are fully scaleable.
Once a site has our solutions in place, they can quite literally buy additional Voice terminals and add them on to their existing applications. It's a similar story for our fully integrated solutions: once a business has our Central Product Management Solution, BMS, in place, they can add on as many stores as they wish.
W&LN - Implementing these solutions and using them effectively goes hand in hand with process change. What do you offer in terms of consultancy to customers embarking on using this technology?
One of the main benefits of using Voice technology with our bolt-on VoiceMan application is that generally there is little change in the processes required. We effectively take an electronic conversion of a paper-pick list and turn it into Voice communications so the operatives no longer have to carry a pen and paper, or a handheld terminal, around with them. It is extremely quick and easy to train and operatives can get up to full speed in a matter of days.
W&LN - How easily modified are your solutions as clients' operations change? How easily can your solutions interface with existing systems?
Our solutions can be easily interfaced into any existing systems. We are regularly asked, with regard to our VoiceMan application, whether we have an interface to this WMS or that WMS, when it actually doesnÕt matter. Because all we do is take an electronic conversion of a pick-list, it doesnÕt matter which WMS it comes from.
We have even had one customer that has completely changed their WMS, and because the warehouse operatives are communicating via our VoiceMan application, the change of WMS has been almost transparent.
W&LN - What's involved with your solutions, from first conversation to go live? What does a typical solution cost? How long before the customers see a financial return?
For our Voice implementations, from the signing of an agreement to the point of go-live, can be as little as 4 weeks, but probably because we are so busy these days 6-8 weeks is more typical. The cost of an implementation is very much dependent on the size of the operation due to the number of Voice units required. How long customers take to get the return on their investment usually depends on what they include in the calculation. If they include both accuracy and productivity benefits they are typically talking less than 6 months and sometimes less than 3. If they only want to include productivity benefits, they should still see a return on investment in 12 months.
W&LN - Finally, how big is the market opportunity for VoiteQ, and where do you see the company going from here?
Generally anybody who knows about VoiteQ knows us for our Voice Solutions. We are by far the UK's leading provider of Voice-Directed Solutions, and are working hard to maintain that position. Almost any warehouse-related RF application can be converted into a Voice application, which makes it a massive market opportunity. We don't, however, want to necessarily put all our eggs into the Voice basket and that is why we are currently embarking on a plan to promote our other solutions, which are excellent but are currently under-utilised.
VoiteQ
Tel: 0870 3000 480
www.voiteq.com
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