Top Trends from Automate 2022: Demoing the Economic Impact of RaaS

Last week, DecisionLink attended Automate, the most powerful display of automation in North America, held at the Huntington Place Convention Center in Detroit, Michigan. With over 500 exhibitors and thousands of attendees, it’s the best place to discover powerful solutions—from innovations in AI and robotics to tried-and-true workhorse technologies—that will solve your unique challenges and propel you forward.

Our team attended the conference to hear from some of the best and most forward-thinking thought leaders in the space. We sought to learn the most pressing challenges faced by these leaders, discover new and disruptive technologies that are shaking up the robotics industry, and deepen our knowledge on the future of robotics and automation.

Some of the major trends we picked up on were:

Projecting and demonstrating ROI for Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) investments is a big focus. 

We heard conversations around “ROI” in nearly every session we attended. And it makes sense! By leveraging a robot versus manual labor over the lifetime of a project, RaaS can have a dramatic impact on cost savings. From labor savings, avoidance of overtime pay, elimination of IT costs and training cost savings, to additional benefits like increases in throughput, productivity, consistency and production, the impact to a business can be tremendous. 

Value is a company-wide strategy, the business benefits pile up quickly. Our team is here to assist you at any stage of the process. Let's talk about it!

Sales teams need to adapt to new selling motions, otherwise, manufacturers risk losing market share. 

The attendees of Automate were split between manufacturers who have been around for decades and are starting their RaaS shift with sophisticated robotic and AI capabilities, to new, disruptive robotics providers who are shaking up the market. Both groups of companies are navigating today’s digital transformation, but one major takeaway we had was that the salesforce of the larger organizations were having a harder time adapting to the selling requirements to succeed in this as-a-service business transformation and were leaning heavily on features and functionality. 

In order to preserve market share, it’s important for these companies to understand that the last mile in digital transformation is sales enablement. By giving sellers technology to support them in this new selling motion, manufacturers will find they are no longer trying to preserve market share, but instead gaining even more.

The Manufacturing industry is facing the ‘perfect storm’ in employment, which is creating both a headache and an opportunity for the market.

In a session we attended presented by Lou Finazzo, Vice President at Fanuc America, we learned that a 2021 study conducted by Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute predicted that 2.1 million manufacturing positions will go unfulfilled by 2030. These empty positions could cost the U.S. nearly $1 trillion in GDP.

Between the lasting impacts of the pandemic, Baby Boomer retirements, The Great Resignation and a waning interest from Gen Z in manufacturing , the industry could be on the brink of a “mass adoption of automation”. Yet, the industrial automation space is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9% until 2025. 

Not only do the employment trends indicate the need to invest in automation technologies like RaaS and AI, it also highlights the need to empower your existing sales teams so they can work 'smarter, not harder' amid these challenging labor shortages. 

The world of robotics is changing to Robotics-as-a-service and there is a new way to articulate the value proposition of this powerful technology. The companies that are thinking beyond just the technology capabilities and into the quantified economic impact it brings to its customers will see the most success in the coming years. 

Interested in learning more about how to start your journey towards quantifying the economic impact of an investment in RaaS? Contact us today to speak to an expert about how you can get started with an intelligent value-based sales that is flexible enough to meet the needs of your business today and evolve with you into the future.