The year is 2027. Sonya, an entrepreneur, is setting out to establish her own business. After researching and analyzing market opportunities, she decides to create an ecommerce business selling vintage coffee makers to the aging millennial market — now a nostalgic item because of automatic kitchens. Here’s how Sonya puts a variety of bots to work to make it happen.
Education
Sonya has recently finished her Masters in Automated Business Administration (MABA), which equips business professionals to coordinate bots for unique business purposes and manage mixed workforces. She starts by identifying the type of business bots she will need for this new venture.
Strategy
With help from a Strategy Bot, Sonya conducts an in-depth market analysis to sketch out product specifications that can be manufactured at scale. The Strategy Bot scopes out her competition to ensure differentiation between her coffee makers and others within automatic kitchens that require some human interaction, to ensure hers have a bespoke feel that will appeal to customers.
R&D
Sonya’s R&D Bot selects and invites freelance designers to create compelling coffee maker designs based on models from the early 2000s. These designs must comply to certain specifications that are optimized for manufacturing, have the aesthetic she wants, and function well. The R&D bot sets up a remote beta test to ensure that the coffee makers are intuitive and produce coffee that tastes, feels, and smells fresh-brewed.
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Operations
Once the design is finalized, Sonya tasks her Operations Bot to source quotes and lead times from manufacturers. The bot selects the most suitable and cost-effective manufacturer, then Sonya instructs her contract bots to engage with the selected manufacturer’s contract bots in order to scope out mutually beneficial contract terms.
Marketing and sales
Meanwhile, Sonya has employed her Marketing Bot to select and optimize search engines, social media, and target marketing campaigns for her business. A Sales Bot researches and selects the appropriate ecommerce sales channels for the vintage coffee makers, including direct web sales, Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Robo-Etsy, and more.
Finance
While the product is being manufactured and marketed, a Finance bot continues to ensure that investments, capital allocation, and debt, are well-managed and that cashflow and growth are optimized. Business is going well and the community is relishing making coffee the old-fashioned way. After some time Sonya’s Finance bot alerts her to sharp declines in orders; upon carrying out her own strategic analysis she learns that low-cost competitors are edging in on market share and eroding margins. The projected outlook for the business is looking uncertain, so Sonya makes the strategic decision to re-focus her business on a new product — vintage exercise bikes to keep the millennial market energized — and gears up her bots to conquer this new challenge.
As Sonya contently reflects on the efficiency and performance of her automated business bots, she contemplates when she will see the day where she might be replaced by a bot. But then she worries that perhaps she already has been.
