17/10/2006

Robot Technology That Improves the

In Pursuit of the "Live" Service

The following contains excerpts from a discussion by Shu Ishiguro, the leader of Robot Laboratory, and Nozomu Saruhashi, CEO of the NOVA group, on "What can NOVA x Robot Lab do?" from a Robot Laboratory Special Talk Session held in Osaka on October 25th , 2006.

"Although many might wonder between the relationship between NOVA and Robot, when it comes to designing business centering around communication, there is indeed a very close connection. This is because the "living room overseas study" concept, the driving force of NOVA's remarkable progress, is a very unique example of business through a network-based "live service". Although many other firms tried to duplicate the "living room overseas study" business model, no other firm came close to matching the success of NOVA. Furthermore, there are no other companies other than NOVE providing a successful service from a TV meeting system."

"Ten years ago, NOVA first experimented with a service using a high-speed mass circuit, at a time when people said that without water, there could be no circuits passing through a large pipe. However, it was precisely this innovative infrastructure that became the foundation for a highly profitable business line later on."

"The ability to communicate real-time is often taken for granted in today's Internet age. Schools teaching English conversation online do so using software or through simple moving or still images stored in a server. But what differentiates NOVA from others companies is that NOVA has built up its service based on live face-to-face communication so that the student could directly learn from the instructor real time, not from a machine.

But in this system of an online-based 'live class', network stability is by far the critical key issue to a successful service. A sudden disconnection or loss of data in the Internet network abruptly stops the broadcast feed and can create very upset customers. NOVA was particularly aware of this because it could not receive tuition payments from any disconnected sessions. That is precisely the reason why NOVA created its own proprietary network that guarantees no dropped signals or disconnections in live service. Although it was difficult to build such a system at first, the company is now proudly able to finally deliver guaranteed services 24/7 without any system failures. It further believes that real-time, interactive online broadcasting could form the base of new products and services generated from mass bidirectional network circuits."



Challenge Results in Enterprise Expansion and Securing Manpower

"The network system supporting "Living room overseas study" is a model of practicality and efficiency while compromising little, if any, network stability. The current system allows over 3,000 of NOVA's instructors to provide formal lectures, and it is able to do this due to the formation of an electronic manual and progress report chart for each student. The manual is set up to perform 40 minutes of lecture according to a student's level. Also, in order to maximize the potential of the broadband network, the manual contains much rich and compelling content, such as writing directly on the screen, "writing while speaking" for questions, etc. If a question or statement cannot be understood by talking, various aspects of computers, such as moving images, sounds, and others can be utilized to communicate a student's point. Moreover, the chart which records students' profiles and progress can be as detailed as needed so that instructors can know each student right away simply by reviewing it. This system enables NOVA, for example, to provide different instructors each time to create lectures smoothly and without a break in the syllabus. (One of the reasons for changing instructors is to eliminate any personal feelings developed between student and instructor as a result of being taught by the same person over a long period, and only language capabilities would be retained by students.)"

"Conversely, a big limitation of this kind of system is system performance could only be guaranteed up to a certain number of customers, making it very difficult to expand the business without significant capital and operating expenditures. When providing live applications, staffing costs inhibit the size and scale of friendly and quick customer service, for example. In short, although the customer constraints of time and distance can be overcome, labor and equipment costs would still need to be considered."



Service Improvement Utilizing Robot Technology

"The example of NOVA serves as a useful reference. Without a doubt, if time and distance constraints can be overcome, revenues can increase significantly. In fact, NOVA actually broke away from the conventional style of business, the concept of "store". However, the rather large investment in infrastructure such as systems, maintenance, and labor was possible because of management's firm belief in the potential of the system. Presently, the live service most probably cannot be realized in a small scale investment. The most critical success factor would be that enough manpower is available for the service; should there be any lack of manpower, service levels might be compromised."

"Given the large dependence on available human resources, it seems like now is the time to review the entire service process again and try to improve any weak elements using robot technology. Robots as substitutes, for example, can replace and rearrange sub-processes, positively affecting the overall process flow. In this sense, robots as a reengineering tool can add much value to the company by offering customers better products and services."


= To be continued =
In next number, we talk about more detail of the image of this service.