Bots May be the Next Big Supply Chain Invasion
I ran into a bot for the very first time back in the year 2000. These computer programs ideally automate tasks normally handled by humans. For me, the bot streamlined a shopping task. At the time, it blew my mind.
I was heading out on a business trip to the Netherlands, and I wanted to capture the trip in pictures with a new camera. My job was to support the roll-out of a warehouse management system (WMS) for a 3PL service provider in the small port city of Moerdijk. They also wanted to roll out improved distribution processes to help support the business of some large electronics OEMs.
How CHAT-BOTS Influenced The Author to take This Technology Forward to the Supply Chain Industry?
I was all excited and I wanted to buy the best camera for the trip. I did my research and found out that the Canon EOS Rebel 2000 was market leader of the time. Next, I set about finding the best deal on my chosen model. Although e-commerce was still in early days, I had had a good experience buying a watch a few months earlier so I decided to go online again. As I started my research, I encountered the MySimon(.)com shop bot. It promised to crawl the Internet to find the best price for the product and collate a list all the vendors that carried the product.
mySimon’s proprietary Virtual Learning Agent (VLA) technology took a unique approach to creating mass quantities of intelligent agents that mimicked human behavior and could be “trained” to extract specific information from any merchant Web site. The agents were created by mySimon Product Intelligence (SPIs), non-programmers that interact with the VLA system. mySimon didn’t even necessarily attempt to comprehend a single vendor’s site with a single agent; their arsenal back then was approximately 9,000 agents designed to glean pricing information from 2,200 merchants. Non programmer’s used a proprietary language to script agents with an emphasis on simplicity, minimizing the cost of adding new vendors or dealing with a redesign. In addition to agents that crawled merchant sites multiple times per day, agents for particularly volatile or esoteric commodities like books and movies would be spawned in real time. Later that year, CNET bought mySimon for about $800 million.
Once mySimon had pointed me to the best bargain, I called the e-tailer, made sure the product was available at that price and ordered it. B&H Video delivered my camera in time for me to take it to Europe and I took the best pictures ever. I knew I was seeing the start of something that had the potential to transform businesses of all kinds.
Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on Feb 28, 2018.
Puga Sankara
Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com.
