Alexa digital puck joins HighJump staff on demo stage

Supply chain technology provider HighJump Software Inc. introduced a lineup of high profile speakers during the keynote events at the firm's "Elevate" user conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.

Attendees heard from Olympic gold medalist Dick Fosbury, whose innovative “Fosbury Flop” technique earned him the top height in track & field’s high jump event at the 1968 Mexico City games, and from Lori Jackson, the hard-charging director of operations and fulfillment for Dollar Shave Club, who succeeded in leading the construction of multiple DCs for the fast-expanding online retailer of razors and grooming products.

But the speaker that may have gained the most attention from techies in the audience was a diminutive critter with the dimensions of a hockey puck and a habit of speaking only in response to direct questions.

In a live stage demonstration, executives from Minneapolis-based HighJump controlled their warehouse management system (WMS) software by giving spoken commands to Alexa, the cloud-based artificial intelligence tool that drives the Echo Dot, a personal digital assistant from Amazon.com Inc.

In the demo, HighJump Vice President of Corporate Technology Sean Elliott gave a verbal order to the Echo Dot, asking it to launch a wave of orders for Evil Bunny beer, a fictional product created by HighJump to demonstrate its software and inspired by the 1975 comedy movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

In response, the Echo Dot translated the input from Orlando, uploaded the message to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform where the Alexa AI resides, routed that order to HighJump’s own cloud servers in Denver, got a response, and reversed the entire track to confirm the transaction aloud back in the Florida conference room, HighJump CSO Ross Elliott explained.

The demo may have scored some gee-whiz points by bringing talking bots into the supply chain, but it was designed for a broader purpose, he said. By connecting a common consumer electronics device to business software seldom seen outside the warehouse, HighJump demonstrated the importance of human-friendly design and smart devices, two trends that HighJump says logistics companies must follow to stay competitive in 2017.