Market conditions have been fluctuating dramatically, affecting warehousing and logistics worldwide. As such, staffing has become more difficult for warehouse operations.
Through all these ups and downs, the one constant is the need to invest in operational efficiency. Robotic automation provides the right solution to increase efficiency and help scale your operations to address varying business needs – especially now, when capital is tight.
So how do you invest in warehouse automation when capital investments are hard to justify?
Challenges of buying robotic systems using CAPEX
You might consider buying robotic automation systems for your warehouse — but there are several challenges you might face with a traditional CAPEX-based commercial model:
- High barrier to entry: Such a large capital expense needs to be budgeted a year or two in advance. If not, the approval process can be cumbersome for such a large capital outlay.
- Ongoing performance issues: It can be difficult, even painful, to get your vendor to engage when there is a problem — unless you’re paying for expensive aftercare.
- Obsolete equipment: Performance can degrade over time. Your operational needs might change (e.g. new SKU mix). You might have new workflows. All this can lead to equipment not meeting your needs anymore, and ultimately you abandoning it.
Finding a better way to invest in automation
We have walked into many warehouses and fulfillment centers where we have seen automation equipment, literally, collecting dust. It became obvious to us that the traditional capital-based buying model used to buy bare-metal shelving is not ideal for investing in highly dynamic AI-powered robotic systems.
We set out to change this.
Drawing from our own experiences in the industry and the pain points of our customers, we felt the path was clear: to serve our mission of bringing world-class AI-powered robotic automation into warehouses, we needed to link our performance with your success more tightly than ever before.
We’re doing that now with the rollout of Covariant One.
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Covariant One: Investing in guaranteed performance
Covariant One is the industry’s first performance-based commercial model for adopting robotic automation systems for your warehouse. We’ve been leaders in driving robotic innovation in the warehouse. Now we’re leading with this new model, which was born out of one thing: what our customers said they needed.
At the core of Covariant One is the role of Covariant as a partner vested in ensuring you are getting the performance you need to drive operational efficiency for the entire life of the system. We do this with benefits across three dimensions:
- Day One ROI: You will be ROI-positive on Day One, with no financial risk. Until you see the performance and value we promised, you don’t have any financial commitments.
- Guaranteed performance: We guarantee that you will continue to see the performance you need as long you have the system. And we’ll provide proactive support and performance updates to ensure you’re getting the maximum efficiency.
- Operational flexibility: As your operation changes and automation strategy evolves, Covariant One provides the flexibility to adapt and grow with your business with the option to repurpose our systems to address new use cases.
Performance is essential when it comes to realizing the maximum value of robotic warehouse automation (read our post about performance-based vendor assessment). With Covariant One, we further solidify performance as the core value that drives our relationship and commitment to – and with – our customers.
We believe that Covariant One is the best method for investing in robotic automation for your warehouse.