Author name: intellore

Smart Service World
Education

Introduction to Industrie 4.0 and Smart Service World

Education /

Recently, Intellore was invited to speak to the audience of sales & marketing professionals of a leading and well-established Pune-based company that manufactures products in dimensional metrology mainly for the automotive and other engineering industries. While the company’s sales staff had heard about Industrie 4.0 and Industrial IOT, they were curious to understand the terminology, gauge its impact on their industry and brainstorm its relevance in future-proofing their product roadmaps.   Narayan Gokhale – Head of Sales & Marketing at Intellore Systems delivered the key note address.   He started off by highlighting the big picture – How over the past 5 to 10 years conventional companies (industry participants) have been disrupted – by highlighting the staggering market capitalization of “network brands” such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb etc. and comparing them with “traditional brands” such as Hertz, AT&T, Starwood and Walmart, emphasizing that “Network Orchestrators” deliver value through connectivity. Digital networks and platforms are eating the world by changing all the rules of business, including the sources of value, the ways that organizations deliver it, and the mental models or beliefs that guide organizations and their leaders. This transformation is creating problems for existing firms with established, non-digital, non-network business models.   By using this pitch and mixing with day-to-day examples, the digital transformation of the Mfg. Industry -namely, Industrie 4.0 and Smart Service World topics were introduced. The world as we know and experience it today has been shaped by three major technological revolutions. The fourth industrial revolution promises to marry the worlds of production and network connectivity in an “Internet of Things” making “INDUSTRIE 4.0” a reality.  TWO of 10 “Future Projects” identified by the German government as part of its High-Tech Strategy 2020, the “INDUSTRIE 4.0” project and its successor “SMART SERVICE WORLD – Internet-based services for the economy” project, represents a major opportunity for Germany to establish itself as an integrated industry lead market and provider. Both these put together is also called as “The Internet of Things and Services”  Germany’s position as an embedded systems technology leader gives birth to enabling cyber-physical system (CPS) technologies which ingeniously marry the digital virtual world with the real world. Cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) made up of smart machines, logistics systems and production facilities allow peerless ICT-based integration for vertically integrated and networked manufacturing.   Narayan went on to give an example based on the project that Intellore is doing for a customer (OEM), by highlighting various stages of their digital transformation journey –  “product or an embedded-system” to “networked-embedded-system” to “cyber-physical system (CPS)” and finally to what Industrie 4.0 calls “Internet of Things, Data and Services”, culminating in to OEM’s new offering of “Product-as-a-Service (PaaS)”. Many North American companies call this concept as “Product-Service Hybrids”. He referred to another project that Intellore is executing by highlighting how their customers’ “offerings” evolved from “Product or Equipment” to “Equipment Services” to “Information Services” and simultaneously   their “Go-to-Market (GTM) Approach” evolving from “pre-digital product line” to “digital product line” to “new market segment” again leading to a new business model of “Product-as-a-Service (PaaS)”  As the company is yet to embark on its Industrie 4.0 (digital transformation) journey, Narayan advised them to refer to “Guideline Industrie 4.0: Guiding principles for the implementation of Industrie 4.0 in small and medium sized businesses” from the VDMA (German Engineering Federation) that is regarded as a practical tool for the identification and implementation of company-specific approaches to Industrie 4.0.   He specifically advised them to look at “The Toolbox Industrie 4.0” that is a key element of this guideline as it combines the different application levels of Industrie 4.0 in reference to product innovations and production-related technical applications. The application levels are each broken down into five technological and sequential development stages. The Toolbox Industrie 4.0 becomes the starting point for classifying the fields of expertise offered by the company and thus serves as a basis for new ideas during an Industrie 4.0 implementation process.  Narayan concluded by saying that tomorrow’s business economy would undoubtedly be dominated by “network orchestrators” and reiterated not to take anything for granted, as their competition might come from unexpected quarters and disrupt their industry’s conventional business model. He challenged the audience to rethink how value is created for their customers – can their products can be sold as “Gauging-as-a-Service” or “Metrology-as-a-Service”?  The Managing Director proposed a vote of thanks and assured the audience that the transformation will start from the top leadership team and announced that henceforth Industrie 4.0 to be topmost on their agenda of all internal meetings, especially for R & D, product management and marketing functions.  

IntelliBytes

Digital Transformation: “Start with a Why”

IntelliBytes /

As an inherent part of its sales process, Intelllore as a “Technology Services” provider, is often in front of its customers in a consultative role, advising them about their digital transformation initiatives. Over the past 3 to 4 years, many companies have taken the first step in their digital transformation journey and did earmark a small portion of their R & D budget for the same. However, when we interacted with these companies a year or two of after kick-starting this initiative, there was a common thread – most of these projects did not move beyond the POC (Proof of Concept) phase.   Here are two representative examples – One of the companies had an established product and before moving to “product-as -a service” were launching a cloud-based “remote-monitoring software” to go along with this product. They were able to sell only 2 software licenses and had to give this software product free to many customers. Another company, a leader in downhole drilling products and systems, could not sell “value” in their after-market services. Their biggest pain-point was that none of their customers paid for their services and firmware updates. Their mission, to digitally transform the product to monetize their services. The company is struggling even to define and launch the POC project.   When analyzing this VOC (Voice of Customer), we are reminded of the famous book “Start with Why:  How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” by Simon Sinek, a British-American author, motivational speaker, and organizational consultant. Companies with inspirational leadership identify a purpose and follow it. The actions they take and what they make is secondary to achieving their mission. Sinek calls this leadership process the “Golden Circle”: It starts with a vision (the “Why”), then moves to implementation (the “How”), and then conquers the product or service (the “What”). Unfortunately, many companies and leaders have this pattern backward. They first focus on what they do and how; then they try to differentiate their product based on price, quality or features.   The excerpts below, from Simon Sinek’s book, aptly analyze why the digital transformation initiatives (projects) in many companies did not move beyond the POC phase.  If a company sincerely believes that “Digital Transformation” is the way ahead, their internal and external message has to start with WHY, a purpose, cause or belief that has nothing to do with WHAT they do. What they do – the products that they make, no longer serves as the reason to buy, they serve as the tangible proof of their cause. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.  Organizations use the tangible features and benefits to build a rational argument for why their company, product or idea is better than another. Companies try to sell us WHAT they do, but we buy WHY they do it. When communicating from the inside and out, the WHY is offered as the reason to buy and the WHAT serves as the tangible proof of that belief.  Recently, Apple Computers created history. Their market capitalization touched 1 Trillion dollars. Apple’s competitors lost their cause, they turned from companies with a cause into a company that sold products. And when that happens, price, quality, service and features become the primary currency to motivate a purchase decision. At that point a company and its products have become commodities.  If a customer feels inspired rather than manipulated to buy a product, they will be able to verbalize the reasons why they think what they bought is better. It is the cause that is represented by the company, brand, product or person that inspires loyalty.   Instead of asking “WHAT should we do to compete?” the questions must be asked, “WHY did we start doing WHAT we´re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”  Those who know WHY need those who know HOW. That’s where Intellore comes in the picture and our tagline “Your Vision, Our Mission” says it all – Your Vision (The “Why”), Our Mission (“The How” and “what”)!

State of Industry

Technology Startups – The Capacity-Building Conundrum

State of Industry /

Wikipedia defines a startup or start-up as an entrepreneurial venture which is a newly emerged business venture that aims to meet a marketplace need, want or problem by developing a viable business model around products, services, processes or platforms. A startup is a new business venture designed to effectively develop and validate a scalable business model. The typical early tasks in forming a startup are assembling a team to secure skills, gaining the know-how, collecting or finding financial resources, and other elements to conduct research on the target market. A startup will then begin building a first minimum viable product (MVP), a prototype, to validate, assess and develop the new ideas or business models and concepts. Start-ups typically go through the life cycle stages of Ideating, Concepting, Committing, Validating, Scaling and Establishing. After committing themselves fully to the new venture, start-ups need to decide about their own capacity building, how much to build inhouse and how much to subcontract or outsource. By “capacity-building”, we mean the “people-resources” with the right mix of skills, competencies, experience and expertise. Start-ups must be “lean” in the validation phase, first defining and building the minimum viable product (MVP), testing and iterating for user acceptance, growth and revenues. The next critical stages of Scaling and Establishing come with their unique changes regarding capacity-building as not only internal but external stakeholders’ interests have to be effectively addressed. The core competencies of any start-up are their unique idea, innovation, Intellectual Property (IP), technical knowhow and productizing this idea through product marketing management and marketing communications. Startups need to protect these competencies (family jewels) by preserving these tasks inhouse and looking for efficient ecosystem partners for capacity-building as a perfect win-win situation for all the stakeholders. Many startups have found Intellore’s unique value proposition very compelling – one-stop digital transformation services based on rock solid foundation of embedded systems services and software services. Over the past year or so, Intellore has been extremely fortunate to interact with several start-ups, not only in India but from various parts of the globe. They are from diverse verticals / applications / domains – Industrial IOT Platform-as-a-service provider, innovative portable digital health monitors, private bicycle ride share company with unique electronic locks, LoRa based utility metering for smart cities, medication adherence devices, automotive surround view system, track, trace and geofencing of industrial safety wearables, smart solutions to improve pedestrian and vehicle road safety etc. The biggest risk involved in outsourced development projects is Intellectual property (IP) protection. Start-ups value Intellore’s robust processes of non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, IP protection polices because being a pure-play technology services provider, the resulting Intellectual Property (IP) belongs solely to the customer (start-up). Intellore helps resolve the capacity-building conundrum that technology startups face through various engagement models / partnering solutions comprising the “resource-based” (ODC, FTE, T & M) engagement models where we specialize in assembling and managing dedicated teams of highly skilled technical professionals to augment your in-house resources as well as “project-based” engagements that deliver the exact scope-of-work based on our experience, expertise, knowledge and reusable frameworks for a fixed price. Being based in India, it is only logical to end by India-centric concluding remarks – the Indian startup ecosystem is here to stay because it has a track record and because technology has fundamentally changed the way we do things. Startups are using technology to come up with innovative solutions for India’s problems. When these solutions succeed in a market the size, scale and complexity of India, they can be duplicated in other large emerging markets too. There is also no dearth of Indian startups who command a solid client base outside the country. It is now getting increasingly clear that India’s startup ecosystem has become vibrant and mainstream in many ways – in terms of job creation, in terms of solving consumer problems, and in terms of creating products for the rest of the world. With this, can global investors stay away? They are realizing this and have made a beeline for India.

Articles

Decoding digital transformation

Articles /

The key to navigating the modern business landscape is collaborating with partners who know exactly where you want to go – meet Intellore As we know, the primary goal of any enterprise is to create value for stakeholders, deliver value to the end-user and to make money. Many enterprises employ traditional business models, which are being challenged by digital insurgents who are introducing disruptive business models centred around the use of data. So, what is it that these digital insurgents are doing differently that is making them successful? They are looking at digital as an enabler and data as the new fuel, while keeping the users at the centre of their strategy For instance, Oyo, which was launched in 2013, revolutionised the fragmented and legacy-driven budget hospitality space in India by standardising services, amenities and in-room experience through its proprietary apps. These apps map the entire value chain management from inventory, room-service, revenue and customer relationship. At the core of this business model is data supported by scientific algorithms that decide pricing and help highlight areas with high demand.  For senior executives (CXOs), the problem is manifold where transformation requires not just digital transformation but also business transformation, which includes long, drawn out actions such as changing the DNA of the organisation.  Intellore has had CXOs approach them because Intellore understands what it takes to achieve a digital transformation  vision. Equipped with some of the best talent in the industry Intellore offers agility and flexible engineering capacity to accommodate a tactical initial experimental phase to a more strategic end-to-end digital transformation. Intellore’s differentiated portfolio of services from embedded, software, mobility, cloud to data analytics gives CXOs everything that’s needed under a single roof.  Breaking up journey Intellore believes that any digital transformation journey can be broken down using Six Sigma principles. The journey starts with defining a business problem, converting that to a statistical problem with the help of data, obtaining a statistical solution and finally converting that back to a business solution.  Intellore’s involvement starts with making data available by connecting edge devices or sensors using various wired and wireless technologies and further extending it to public or private networks. The data can then be integrated through a variety of gateways into central locations securely via clouds, such as AWS, GCP, Azure, MindSphere using software development stacks such as WAMP, LAMP, MEAN.  The next step is to conduct analytics on the data which involves descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive  analysis to facilitate data driven decisions or, as Intellore calls it, a statistical solution. Data analytics backed with rich visualisations using mobile and web technologies, provides rich insight about the data. This empowers enterprises to embark on the four phases of Industry 4.0 evolution as highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 study  “Industrial Internet of Things: Unleashing the Potential of Connected Products and Services”. The four phases are: operational efficiency, new products and services, outcome economy and autonomous pull economy (see graphic below).  Intellore is currently working with Animus Ventures – a startup that is disrupting the personal healthcare space through its integrated holistic healthcare delivery system Scio.   Scio is improving the healthcare space by moving from a current transactional to a value-based outcome for consumers by offering a proprietary unified, integrated and comprehensive ecosystem. This encompasses every aspect of an individual’s healthcare requirements by using futuristic diagnostic devices, simplified user-experience, periodic intervention, health insurance and artificial intelligence/machine learning for data analytics.  The key to success in this competitive environment is collaborating with partners who understand the nuances of digital transformation. Make the leap faster with the right partners.  ABOUT INTELLORE Founded by Chetan Khare, Prasanna Rege, and Devendra Abhyankar and based in Pune, India Intellore provides differentiated technology services offering flexible engineering capacity with a focus on Industry 4.0 and digital transformation.     www.intellore.com

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