• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, July 22, 2018

As companies look to deploy voice technologies in their businesses, they are faced with when to jump in and how much to invest.

The process typically starts with generally figuring out what they want to do with voice and then how to get started.

Almost a third (32%) of businesses are at the discovery phase of exploring voice-activated technologies, according to a survey of 700 U.S. senior-level decision makers in marketing, technology or operations conducted by Globant, a digital consulting company.

However, voice is progressing along in other companies, with a third (33%) already considering possible vendors and more than a quarter (27%) already having selected a voice technology supplier. That may not be near the end of the process, since 9% of businesses tried a vendor and already moved on to another one.

There are reasons to move to voice, since 32% of companies believe voice will prove to be their biggest differentiator from competitors this year, as I wrote about here recently (Voice Tech In Personal Life Tops Business Use: Study).

Those exploring voice-activated technologies plan to fund the efforts to one degree or another. More than a third (37%) plan to invest from one to 10% of their budget, 28% to invest 11% to 25%, with 22% planning to invest 26% to 50% and 13% plan to invest more than 50%.

Besides budget and associated resources required to move forward with voice-activated technology, perception plays a part, since 75% of decision makers typically think of companies using voice interactions as more sophisticated than others, according to the survey.

Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and others await.