Machine customers

Don’t waste manpower on recurrent purchasing tasks, says Steve Cassidy: systems are doing it for themselves

Machine customers? I’m busy enough dealing with real customers, thank you very much. I get the instinct, but machine customers are very real – in fact, you should probably consider setting up one of your own. Simply put, a machine customer is an autonomous service that can make purchases without human involvement. A good example is printer supplies: modern printers can monitor their own ink or toner levels, and automatically order more when supplies run low. Well, that sounds mundane. I was picturing machines making complex purchasing decisions. That’s certainly where some futurists imagine we’re heading: not just restocking the stationery cupboard but making significant decisions about which products to buy and when to switch suppliers. This, incidentally, is a bit of a nightmare for the CRM industry, whose existence largely depends on…

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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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