Zebra Technologies Corporation has announced its collaboration with Google Cloud, Android and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to help enterprises deliver transformative customer experiences along with improved employee productivity and insights powered by generative AI.
The aim of this is to reduce the cognitive load on frontline employees and allow for better just-in-time decision-making with faster onboarding and training. It will further empower the frontline as labour availability and cost challenges persist and employees are required to be more multi-skilled than ever while increasing the quality of their engagement with customers.
Employees will be able to leverage a chat experience from a handheld device to easily access information to answer questions and prompts like, “How do I open the store?” and “What type of wiring should a customer use for a 100-watt electrical panel?” The capabilities are powered by generative AI with domain specific knowledge through the processing and ingestion of documents such as standard operating procedures, policies, employee training materials and product knowledge.
“We want to shift conversations around generative AI from ‘how’ it works to ‘what’ it can do to create new ways of working that make everyday life better for organisations, their employees and those they serve,” said Tom Bianculli, CTO, Zebra Technologies. “We now see the merging of planning and execution systems in the enterprise. Generative AI will accelerate that with finely tuned, real-world models that can schedule and automate tasks, respond to requests, and give recommendations based on the context of a situation in a worker’s moment of need.
“Employees now have a huge volume of knowledge derived from policies, procedures and product information in the palms of their hands – an ‘always-on’ digital assistant that can reduce the time to competency and ensure best practices are consistently leveraged. They are saving time, improving customer interactions, training staff more quickly and giving frontline workers more autonomy and satisfaction in their jobs.”
These outcomes may soon be a reality across enterprises in retail, healthcare and transportation and logistics, with Zebra devices built on the Android operating system and powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ processors with on-device AI capabilities.
Together with Google’s Gemini and open-source Gemma models, the full range of generative AI deployments is made possible, from on-device to on-premise, cloud and hybrid options.
“Generative AI is fundamentally changing how many organisations operate and will fuel a new era of how both customers and employees will interact with businesses and brands,” said Rouzbeh Aminpour, global retail solution engineering manager, Google Cloud. “By utilising Google Cloud’s leading gen AI capabilities, Zebra can help companies across industries empower their employees with better tools and new capabilities, making their work more productive.”
