We recently explored the world of proving return-on-investment (ROI) for robotics companies and integrators, but this game is entirely different when it comes to enterprise robotics.
For most enterprise organizations, implementing a large-scale robot fleet represents a significant financial investment, and the “initial customers” are often internal stakeholders who want to see a successful proof-of-concept (POC) before approving total adoption.
The process of proving ROI can feel almost impossible. However, with the strong data infrastructure provided by Formant, business leaders are quickly able to make data-driven decisions and demonstrate ROI. Let’s dive into how Innovation teams can leverage Formant’s cloud robotics platform, paired with our new feature Formant Analytics, to prove ROI to all stakeholders.
Comparison between vendors
Selecting the right robot vendor is crucial for maximizing ROI and ensuring fleets are successful long into the future. In most cases, enterprise organizations explore and test a few vendors, but it can be difficult to understand which vendor is the best fit and, further, decide how large their fleet should be.
Formant can help your team assess the POC phase to ensure you select the right vendor. Our platform, with the help of our Formant Analytics feature, enables you to compare robot performance across different brands. The data ingested from each robot can be visualized and compared using metrics across vendors like speed, accuracy, and payload capacity.
Right-sizing your robot fleet
So you’ve selected your vendor and now need to determine the exact number of robots you should rent or purchase for your fleet.
Initially, you might believe that bigger is always better, right?
This isn’t always the case when it comes to robotics. Let’s say you’re tasked with automating a box-packing process. A vendor might recommend ten robots, claiming it’s the most efficient solution. But how do you know this is an accurate number of robots that can handle the workload effectively? With Formant, you can use your data to help make decisions that save you significant upfront costs and demonstrate to stakeholders that your team is making sound financial decisions.
Furthermore, you can gain precise insights into how many robots are truly required for a task to check against vendor recommendations. This “double-checking” ensures an optimally sized fleet. By avoiding the pitfall of an oversized fleet, you maximize ROI and commit to data-driven decision-making from the very beginning.
Analyze and optimize
Of course, the success of an enterprise robotics initiative goes beyond optimizing your fleet solely in the POC phase. A successful POC requires a strong cloud robotics platform to monitor and continually optimize fleet operations.
Formant goes beyond initial deployment to empower continuous analysis and optimization of your enterprise fleet operations. By continuously analyzing fleet operations, you can pinpoint common errors, assess robot performance, and leverage data to develop predictive maintenance schedules. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and demonstrates a long-term commitment to hardware health – a key component of ROI.
Formant’s user-friendly interface for data exploration makes this process accessible to everyone. With Formant Analytics, any role within the organization can build valuable visualizations (line charts, bar charts, etc.) to understand data trends at a glance, making insights readily accessible to all stakeholders and fostering a data-driven culture within the team. For users requiring even deeper dives into the data, Formant offers an advanced mode with an AI-powered SQL query generator. This empowers you to uncover even more granular insights, strengthening your ROI case.
By leveraging the power of the Formant platform and Formant Analytics, you can move beyond basic visualizations and uncover hidden patterns within your data that can further optimize your operations and solidify your ROI story, leading to stakeholder buy-in for a successful enterprise robotics initiative.
