{"id":5174,"date":"2022-06-12T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/?p=5174"},"modified":"2022-07-14T11:17:21","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T16:17:21","slug":"material-handling-ops-increasingly-optimize-by-using-virtually-anything-as-a-service-xaas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/12\/material-handling-ops-increasingly-optimize-by-using-virtually-anything-as-a-service-xaas\/","title":{"rendered":"Material Handling Ops Increasingly Optimize by Using Virtually Anything as a Service (XaaS)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"htmlBody article_div\">\n<div class=\"roofHeader\">Feature<\/div>\n<div class=\"byline\">By <span class=\"author-name\">NICOLE NELSON<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutions-digital.com\/mhiq\/0322_volume_10__issue_3\/MobilePagedReplica.action?pm=2&amp;folio=42#pg42\"><strong><em>Click here to read the full feature in the digital version of MHI Solutions.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"picture\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/042.jpg\" alt=\"material handling\"><figcaption><span class=\"attribution\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ISTOCK.COM\/ANTHONYROSENBERG\">ISTOCK.COM\/ANTHONYROSENBERG<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span class=\"dropCap\"><strong>F<\/strong><\/span>rom EaaS to PaaS and SaaS to XaaS and beyond, an alphabet soup representing an array of &#8220;as a service&#8221; providers have rapidly entered the supply chain vernacular at a speed so fast that even the most knowledgeable of industry insiders have, at times, been befuddled with the smattering of consonants and vowels preceding &#8220;aaS.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These acronyms have all crept up, even in the last year or two, so I think we are all in the dark on some of these,&#8221; said Gabe Grifoni, CEO and co-founder of MHI member Rufus Labs, one of the MHI 2022 Innovation Award finalists in the Best Innovation of an Existing Product category. Rufus provides PaaS\u2014otherwise known as a platform as a service\u2014through the use of its WorkHero wearable technology platform.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These terms have been invented by whoever is selling the service for the most part,&#8221; Grifoni said, and tongue-incheek quips, &#8220;If I could buy a subscription to get fruit monthly, I would have an \u2018FaaS,\u2019 right? I would have \u2018fruit as a service.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>All joking aside, multiple brands of &#8220;aaS&#8221; have evolved with much success in recent years. Statista, a provider of market and consumer data, reports that 74% of respondents from a global survey indicated that a primary reason for pursuing &#8220;aaS&#8221; offerings is that the business requires more flexibility while still maintaining optimal IT operations. Other reasons include the shift from CapEx to OpEx or a lack of expertise to manage themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a little out of control, but the main part of \u2018as a Service\u2019 is that you no longer really have to own certain things,&#8221; Grifoni explained of the dominantly cloud-based \u2018aaS\u2019 offerings. &#8220;You have everything lumped into one, and that hopefully gives you whatever that \u2018as a Service\u2019 is so you don\u2019t have to think about what other tools are needed to make an offering complete. If it is \u2018as a Service,\u2019 it is always going to keep you up to date.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While the popularity of all &#8220;aaS&#8221; has undoubtedly skyrocketed of late, it wasn\u2019t always so readily embraced. When Rufus WorkHero debuted as an all-in-one monthly subscription and service platform in 2019, Grifoni recalled pushback from an industry set in its ways. By and large, companies were then accustomed to the traditional business model of buying a $4,000 piece of equipment for every worker\u2014that would inevitably need to be replaced.<\/p>\n<p>Grifoni explained that customers that were accustomed to a routine of cyclically financing such capital expenditures and then depreciating the assets every five to seven years. &#8220;It was really hard to get people to buy into a platform until the world changed in 2020 with COVID. Logistics got even busier over the last few years and it has been a very quick acceleration to customer adoption.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Today, Grifoni mentioned customers ranging from J. Jill women\u2019s apparel to Jay Group\u2019s third-party logistics provider have successfully shifted from traditional CapEx hardware to PaaS. Bio-med manufacturer Thermo Fisher Scientific posting 99% employee satisfaction ratings from workers, as well as an estimated savings of $2,000 per year per worker from the elimination of low-level and non-value-add work alongside increased pick performance.<\/p>\n<p>Software as a service is also trending as evidenced by Blue Yonder\u2019s year-over-year SaaS-specific revenue growth of 44% in 2021. In total, the company topped $1.1 billion in annual revenue as ongoing supply chain challenges have driven significant demand for smart supply chain solutions.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Yonder\u2019s corporate vice president of industry strategy, Chirag Modi, explained the seamless role SaaS offers the marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In 1997, imagine having Microsoft Office version 1997 installed on your computer, and then in 2001-2002, you\u2019re still using 1997 version because your company may not have upgraded you to 2001 version,&#8221; Modi said. &#8220;What this SaaS model does is make it version-less. Every single month, new updates are coming up\u2014these updates could be the patch fixes, feature functions, or a new graphic user interface. It could be anything and everything above. It just makes the process of upgrade, if you will, seamless, because there really is no upgrade because upgrades are happening on a continuous basis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutions-digital.com\/mhiq\/0322_volume_10__issue_3\/MobilePagedReplica.action?pm=2&amp;folio=42#pg42\"><strong><em>Click here to read the full feature in the digital version of MHI Solutions.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From EaaS to PaaS and SaaS to XaaS and beyond, an alphabet soup representing an array of \u201cas a service\u201d providers have rapidly entered the supply chain vernacular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2220,2894,3498,3504,3508,2097,3510,3495,3511,3502,3496,2003,442,1902,1907,3505,3500,3507,3497,3506,3323,3503,3501,122,3509,466,3512,3329,3499],"class_list":["post-5174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-akash-gupta","tag-blue-yonder","tag-chirag-modi","tag-david-griffin","tag-eaas","tag-emerging-technology","tag-energy-as-a-service","tag-gabe-grifoni","tag-iaas","tag-infrastructure-as-a-service","tag-jean-francois-marchand","tag-marin-tchakarov","tag-mhi-solutions","tag-mhi-solutions-magazine","tag-mhisolutionsmag","tag-ocado-group","tag-paas","tag-platform-as-a-service","tag-raas","tag-robotics-as-a-service","tag-rufus-labs","tag-saas","tag-scaas","tag-seegrid","tag-software-as-a-service","tag-supply-chain","tag-supply-chain-as-a-service","tag-ugowork","tag-xaas"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - 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