Marketing 0

Robotics
Since the 1960s, large companies in industrialized countries have
primarily utilized robots for backend automation. Automation robots
have shown the most cost-saving value in manufacturing due to its
labor-intensive nature, especially in recent years when the costs of

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robots have fallen below the inflated wages. The advancement of AI
has widened the range of tasks that industrial robots can handle.
Combined with the endurance and work-hour flexibility of robots,
which lead to better productivity, it makes a solid business case for
companies to automate.
In recent years, companies have attempted to use robots to replace
humans in customer-facing interfaces as a marketing exercise. Due
to its aging population and tendency to accept a small number of
immigrants, Japan is pushing forward and leading the way when it
comes to robots. Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda are
investing in carebots for elderly assistance. Softbank's robot Pepper
becomes a personal companion in nursing homes and a sales
assistant in retail stores. Nestlé in Japan also uses robots to make,
sell, and serve coffee.
But one of the most extreme experiments of robotics is perhaps in
the hospitality sector, where the human role is crucial. The idea is
that the robots will free up staff time to deliver a more personalized
service. Hilton, in Virginia, piloted Connie, a robot concierge.
Powered by IBM Watson AI, it can recommend nearby attractions
and restaurants to hotel guests. Aloft Hotel in Cupertino introduced
a robot butler called Botlr that delivers amenities and room service
to hotel guests and receives tips in the form of tweets. Hotels are also
beginning to use robots for cooking. Studio M Hotel in Singapore, for
example, uses a robot chef to make an omelet.
Although we often visualize the humanoid form, robotics is not only
about physical robots. A growing trend, robot process automation
(RPA), involves software robotics. In RPA, the virtual robot performs
computer work as a human would, following specific guidelines.
Companies use it to automate high-volume, repetitive processes with
no room for error. It is often used for back-office financial
management, such as for invoicing and payment. Human resources
management, such as employee onboarding and payroll processing,
can also be automated.
In sales, RPA can be utilized in several ways. Managing CRM is one
of the most common use cases. The sales team can easily convert
business cards and aggregate paper reports to digital formats and
store them in the CRM system. RPA is also useful to automate emails

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to sales leads. In marketing, RPA is mostly used for programmatic
advertising—which involves automated bidding and buying of digital
advertising placement for an optimized outcome. It is becoming
more popular due to the increasing proportion of the online
advertising budget.