Fighting hunger from on high

Making sure that needy state residents have nutritious food every day is the mission of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. Operating in 17 of New Jersey's 21 counties, the organization distributed more than 44 million pounds of food within the past year from its two distribution facilities. To help it meet rising demand, the Community FoodBank recently implemented the Cloud Voice Management Suite (VMS) from Voxware to manage and direct the picking of food and supplies.

The cloud-based VMS allows the food bank to take advantage of the efficiencies that come with voice picking, but at a lower upfront capital cost than would be required with traditional systems. The Cloud VMS is delivered under a subscription-based pricing model. Since the software resides in the cloud, users do not require extensive tech infrastructure to support it, as would be the case for a voice solution hosted on site.

Within the first three months of implementing the Cloud Voice Management Suite, Community FoodBank of New Jersey saw the time needed to select orders drop by 30 percent due to increased picking productivity. Food bank managers also report that team members have adapted to the software quickly and enthusiastically. Better still, the cross-trained workers at the facility can now use the time saved in picking to perform other tasks.