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Working with an integration partner is not a cost adder. The right ecosystem shortens your project's time-to-value and can pull the associated ROI into the right range. That's only true if you're not working with the right partner with the right experience and in an organized, effective fashion. Reducing total cost of ownership and time to value by getting the right advice from the right team.
Take a look at our supporting service topics.
Working with an integration partner is not a cost adder. The right ecosystem shortens your project's time-to-value and can pull the associated ROI into the right range. That's only true if you're not working with the right partner with the right experience and in an organized, effective fashion. Reducing total cost of ownership and time to value by getting the right advice from the right team.
Welcome to Speaking of Service, the podcast that uncovers practical ways to grow service revenue, control costs, and improve customer satisfaction. If you're looking to innovate, gain a competitive edge, or just learn about the latest service trends, you've come to the right place. In today's episode, Chris Wolf, VP of Strategic Partnerships, joins Randy Thompson, senior Business and Technology Architect at Transition Technologies. To discuss how working with an integration partner is not a cost adder. The right ecosystem shortens your project's time to value and can pull the associated ROI into the right range. Welcome back to the program everybody. Well, today's topic is what I call the ecosystem mandate. In simpler times technology programs were executed between two partners, a buyer and a seller. I retain you to perform a scope of work for me. You perform that work well, I pay you. We part friends, and I may retain you to work with me again. Today in the new as a service model, things are not quite that clear cut. Very often there are portfolios of partners who will enter and exit a project. Returning and recurring, bringing value and extensibility to a program that's creating a requirement for ecosystems that perform for the greater good as opposed to the selfish interests of just those involved, uh, ecosystems require developing new muscles, and this is early days. Uh, i d c has done some research that finds companies who can have high performing ecosystems will perform 50%. than companies that do not. And yet when Accenture surveyed executives, fewer than a quarter of those said that they felt ecosystem management was in their top three capabilities. So there's an opportunity for companies to outperform their peers, and yet there's a lot of new learnings to be had. So with that ecosystem mandate in mind. I thought I would invite one of PTCs, uh, top ecosystem providers, partners to join us. And with that, I'd like to welcome Randy Thompson to the program. So Randy, welcome to Speaking of Service. Thank you. Nice to be here. Now tell us a little bit about Transition Technologies. It's a household name here around the PTC halls, but maybe not for every. It's not that well known in North America anyway. Transition technologies. P S C, or we often just say TT is a global system integrator, headquartered in Poland. Um, we have just under a thousand employees located around the world, so we're pretty good size. Our practice areas include, um, internet of things, iot, predictive analytics. Plm, product lifecycle management, augmented reality, cloud DevOps, and also custom software development. And I have to say it's a real benefit to have so many different specialists that we can bring in on any given project. And TTC TT has more than 10 years of experience working with PTC to implement, um, windshield PLM projects and also Thingworks iot project. Well, you've been a trusted advisor and participant in our ecosystems, helping us both develop some of the P T C products as well as implementing them on behalf of some of our clients. Maybe you could give just in silhouette a couple of examples of the clients that you've served with us. Well, there's, um, , they're spread out all over the world, uh, and each one is using different pieces of our. Uh, expertise. But here in North America, we've done recently done a very interesting project with a company called, um, mti, M t I welding. Um, they're smart, connected products. Um, Uh, project to connect their welding machines back to, uh, to their offices. Um, we've also done projects with, uh, smaller companies, uh, one that's making tortilla making machines. Um, we've done projects inside the factory environment to do in both pharmaceuticals and food production and so on. And then, um, in Europe we're doing quite a few projects, uh, with, uh, some of the automotive companies, especially around, uh, wind. and as a boutique expert in PTCs Technologies, I know you've delivered work to P T C on behalf of P T C and also on behalf of some larger systems integration firms. Tell us about the different models with which you team. So we are, uh, I guess we, one of our key things is we're very flexible, so we'll work how our people want to. We've done work on a project basis where there's a clear endpoint and, um, it's our job to go get it done. We've done projects on time and materials where we're working along with the customer and they're either managing our people or we're just working collaboratively, uh, where they, it's kind of a pay as you go model. We've, uh, so it's really up to the customer, um, what, what, what they need for a particular project. Do they need expertise just for a short time to help them through some problem, or do they need somebody to come in and do the whole project for them? The topic of our podcast has been around service, and many of our listeners are thinking about ways they can make their products smart and connected to improve the way they service those products to be more effective, to improve the user experience and the, and the secondary user experience. um, you've been an expert in a number of those projects. You said to me earlier, you've seen them time and time again. Um, I'd love to know from you, uh, for those who are considering mounting a project to make their product smart and connected, what are some of the top lessons or pieces of advice that you might give to the audience? Yep. Let me start by just giving a little bit of background about me so you can kinda understand where I'm coming from on this. So I wear kind of two hats. I have a business and a technology solution.. So sometimes on projects, I'm performing the role of a business analyst where I'm helping people figure out what the project should be, what the goal should be, the milestones, what the value proposition is, and so on. And another project I'm serving as a technical architect, what technology do we need to use, how should we put together, and that kind of thing. But it's, I've been working in the IOT business for quite a long time, really since, um, the year 2000, even before it was called iot, I worked, I was one of the early employees at a company called acce. A company that specialized in doing i o t for remote service. And it was later acquired by, uh, P T C and at ACC Cita I worked in technical presales, and then I moved over to work in customer success. So I had just kind of front row seat as we acquired new customers and helped them figure out what their programs should be and how it was going to work. And, um, it was interesting because what we saw was that everybody approached i o t. It was special. It was different. They, they were different. Nobody could have a standard answer for their products, their customers, their environment. And after a while you realize that it's true that every company's needs and products and customers were different. But the mechanics, the, I called 'em, the laws of physics were the same across., all projects. We had to get data from machines and equipment. We had to transport it across the internet. We had to collect it, process it, store it, present it. So there's a lot of reuse that happens from that. But I also saw that the problems or the challenges that customers had as they, as they went to market with their iot or their smart connected product programs, they kept facing the same challenge. And it turned out it wasn't a technology problem, , it was all about adopting change internally and then also helping customers understand the value proposition of having, uh, machines and equipment connected. And it's been funny, in the beginning, nobody believed that you could connect things and then it became very easy and then security issues started to come up, and so people became much more paranoid. So now we're back to kind of being hard again, but in the end you have to., probably the number one thing that I see is you have to go into your iott program knowing why it's going to make value for the customer. Mm-hmm., the biggest mistake I see people make is they think, oh, well I'll build an iot, uh, I'll build a connected product and people will pay me, happily, pay me for it. And what you find is no, they pay you for value to them. And by that I mean you help., run their business better, make their product better, make their um, life better, make help them make better decisions. Those are things that are valuable to them. Having a connected product is just another expense. Back when I wore Chuck Thomas sneakers, I didn't know how much better my life would be when I found some running shoes. How do you inspire people to think about how their life could be better, you know, and be willing to spend that premium on, on running shoes for. there really is kind of a build it and they will come mentality. And this is more true now. The early adopters for iot had very clear business cases. They had paying because they had lots of field service people, they had lots of travel, they had lots of expense and so on. Um, now the people are coming into iot T or smart connected products, their business cases are often not as., or they're doing it because they need product differentiation as opposed to pure, um, you know, straight up cost, uh, advantage. And so sometimes it, you have to spend some time really exploring where the value is going to come from, uh, and, and how you're going to position it to your customers. Because as I said at the beginning, if the customers don't see the value, then they don't see any need to have you. and if you can't get connected, then all this iot, OT stuff doesn't mean anything. You can connect on the machine in your lab and that's it. That doesn't really do you any good. So lesson number one over and over again, I'll say this probably 10 more times. It's all about why the customer wants you to be connected so you can help them or deliver something to. Now many of our clients, particularly in North America and Europe, are retaining advisory firms to help them set a five year vision for their products and then pull a program together that will incorporate experts as well as integrators and managed services providers. Have you seen that happening, and how is your company participating in those types of ecosystems? Yeah, so you know, I've talked on and on here about value and so a lot of people don't really know how you define that or how you go measure it or figure it out. And so yes, you go out and you try to hire people to do that, and it works. It takes a lot of time., oftentimes these consultants do not have as much understanding of your business and your customers as you do. So, um, don't be so quick to just hand it off and say, hope they'll come back with the right answer. You have to be actively involved. But, um, our company at TT we can help with some of this. Uh, Consulting, I'll call it, or this project shaping at the beginning, especially for small, medium business, uh, companies because usually it's pretty straightforward. Our company is really about building things. We're very pragmatic. We, we like the idea of let's figure out what. Some value points are let's put together, um, the architecture that will fulfill that and then go build it and get you out in the marketplace as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Because it's only once you have machines in the market at customers that you really start to learn what you don't know you don't know. There are things about your machines that you could never imagine customers. Until you actually see them do it, because you've been monitoring and you see the kinds of alerts and alarms and issues and stoppages and so on that they have, and that gives you many more ideas. One of the things that I often tell customers at the start of a project is 6, 8, 9 months from now, you're going to look at the list of data that we were collecting from the machine, and you're gonna see a group of things and you go, why did we think that was? I., why do we collect that? We thought that was really important. Turned out to not really help us at all. And then the guarantee is there will be a list twice or more long of things you can't believe you didn't think about. Hmm. So you almost have to enter this as, um, a learning, uh, it's a continuous learning process and that's why rather than spend a lot of time analyzing, build something and get out and start to figure. What works and where value comes from and it will and be nimble and agile about it. And you'll come out ahead. So number of our clients of all sizes are concerned that if they, they seek outside help, that's gonna rack up a lot of expensive fees and make their product potentially unaffordable or their project will never meet its milestones. I've heard you say that a well-run project should actually tighten time to value and improve the.. How? How does that happen? So iot is usually something that a company has never bought before or an engineering department has never done before. Now this is certainly less true today than it was 20 years ago. There are people who've moved between companies who may have done, uh, similar things before, but.. It's often, you know, one of the big mistakes I see people make is they say, oh, this is a technology problem. Iott is about technology. Give it to engineering and let them figure it out. Well, what does engineering do? They go to Google or they go read things, or They do a lot of science experiments and so they end up doing a lot of work to learn things, which takes time. and then they make their best estimate is, and I'm not saying that it's always wrong. I mean there, there's skies out there, but you inevitably get further down the road into deployment and so on, and you start to realize like, oh, I didn't think that was important. Or if you used a product like Thingworks and took the training and so on. It's only when you actually get to the end of the project and you look back and go, now I see why those guys in training were talking about that. So, Because it really is important, but at the beginning when you're still learning everything, you don't know what's important and what's not. So it's a long way of answering your question, of saying, uh, a company like ours, transition Technologies, who are experts in doing thingworks and iot, we can do the projects faster than you can do it in-house, probably for less total spend if you account for all your people's time, and there's a really good chance that we will only have to do it. Whereas if you do it yourself, you do that almost first project and then you realize what mistakes you made. And a lot of times you have to come back and do things over again. And that's the killer and that's the one that nobody sees. Yeah. From the front. So if you were sitting as a first timer getting ready to launch your first Smart and Connected products initiative, and you were assembling a team to participate with you as well as internally as well as externally, how would you go about assembling that team? What types of personas would you want participating? How would you govern that team? No, that's a great question and that's something a lot of people struggle with. I'm gonna start by saying the number one predictor of success in iot smart connected products projects is executive commitment. So if you don't have top level people who believe in it and believe in it in a big way, , it's hard to be successful. You cannot do it from the bottom up. You can't do it from engineering. Designing some little prototype thing and then showing to a few people and a few more people. Because what happens with the IOT is you're really adding capabilities to your product. It's almost like adding new features and new services. So it's more than just engineering, doing some technology. it's sales, understanding the messaging or, well, it's marketing, making the messaging. Why Mr. Customer, do you wanna have your products connected? Why do you wanna pay for that? Sales needs to understand how to talk to customers about it, how to answer their questions about security concerns, and so on. You also have to realize that your field service organization, if you have field service people, or even if you have just support people who work in the office, they have to understand why are we doing. Um, it's not to get rid of jobs, it's to help everybody be more efficient and do things faster at less cost. And so you realize that as you start to do this project, it comes out of engineering., it usually rolls over to marketing. Marketing tries to make some stuff up, they push it to sales. Sales goes out, and then we actually sell one, and then everybody tries to figure out, well, how are we gonna deal with it? Mm-hmm., and this is why executive commitment's so important because if you don't have that top level people monitoring and managing and holding people accountable, it's very easy for any of those groups to go, yeah, we're busy today. Come back in a month or two and we'll work on your. And so you need somebody at the top and goes, okay, we are gonna make this happen. We're gonna spend the money, we're going to make sure customers are engaged and want to do it. And really, you know, our metrics going to be number of devices connected in the beginning. That's usually a good one. Uh, but it takes a village. It really takes everybody. And without the somebody or some group at the top making sure people do their, you know, get involved and do their part of the. It just, it often will stall out. Well, not to make things look too daunting, but I know that you've participated and delivered IP into some of the accelerators. PTC is assembling to help our smart and connected products initiatives for our customers go faster, more effectively. Could you talk a little bit about the IP that TT contributed? That's a mouthful right there, , and why you did so and, and how are, how are those benefiting your clients as you make use of.. So Thingworks as itself as a platform that's a whole bunch of things. You don't have to reinvent. You do kind of have to learn to do things the way the platform wants you to do them. So, um, some that's where why you take training and why it takes some effort to make decisions about what to do and what data to collect and how to process and so on. But Thingworks already saves you a lot of time. And then, um, the engineering team came up with the, uh, acceler. that are a bunch of pre-built functionality and they've done one for smart, connected products. That includes a lot of things that just about every, remember I said there's a lot of commonality. Well, this is true. Everybody needs kind of ability to see their fleet. They need ability to drill down on a particular device. They needed to see the alerts. They wanna see trends, they wanna see the data that's coming in. They wanna be able to do file transfers. They may wanna do remote, um, desktop sharing or connectivity or something like that. Those are all common things now that you're all gonna use 'em in different ways and have different data and so on. But the accelerator enables us to just grab all the structures that we need for managing users and managing the, uh, Hierarchy and so on, and just has them pre-built. And so that allows us to get working things a lot faster. Our contribu really our contribu contributions that were fairly small in that, um, it was PTC engineering really did a lot of the work, but we were, we were having regular calls with them and we were deploying it at customers in the field and we were giving feedback on the kind of things we were running into. And, and they were very good about, uh, Randy, when it comes to measuring the success of a project, what are the metrics that you would recommend your clients embrace in the beginning of their project? Once they start to move to scale and as they move into greater maturity?. So in the beginning it's all about It's very simple cuz devices connected equals potential value. No devices connected equals no value. Um, once you're up and going, then you wanna start looking at how many support cases are we able to handle remotely? How many times did we avoid having to send a field service engineer on site? how? How engaged were either of my support users with logging into the system and using it, or in the cases, in many cases this is true, where you have customers who can log in and see their equipment remotely. How often are they engaging with the system? So the more people are engaged with it, you can assume the more value that they're getting out of it. And sometimes that's an easier metric to measure than how many support cases were. remotely, that kind of thing. But you wanna try, you wanna try to get hold of those because each year, as you consider, should we keep going or not? Um, the pro, the I O T project team really should be collecting these metrics all along. They're very hard to create after the fact.. You want to build them and collect them as you go. Is the siren song, really net promoter score. We know what's the end users? Clients. The client's end users experience. Is that where everyone is at? Nirvana. And has anyone gotten there yet? Well, I think NPS is a good one, and remote smart connected products can help you with air because they can allow you to. Rescue people from problems or give them more uptime and so on, but it's almost too big. The, the, if you, if the iot project team wants to get a continued investment to continue to do more, they need to be able to show pretty, in a pretty concrete, real way how it's helping the business. And, and that really means how it's helping customers, which in turn flows back to the, to the. Randy, most of our customers are asking us how they can provide better, uh, data to their end clients about how their machines contribute to sustainability metrics. What are you seeing out in the field? So the questions about sustainability that we're seeing have to do with energy management. often, not a whole factory or a production line type level, but if you are, um, have a smart, connected machine and you can provide through your knowledge of the equipment and the information that you're receiving from the connected product, you can provide that customer with advice of how they can run the machine better, how they can do maintenance better, how they can do maintenance at the right time. These are all things that can make the machine more efficient, which will. perhaps in less energy use or, uh, you know, more sustainability. It'll also help the customer be more efficient and make more product for less. That's always a good thing. And then another big thing is every time you don't have to send a field service engineer out to do a trip, you, you contribute to sustainability. And there's an awful lot of maintenance trips that happened just by the calendar when actually, if you look at the use of the machine, they're not necessary. But that requires a big change in your way of thinking., you mentioned that big change change and a willingness to embrace this technology has gotta be a big hurdle for just about everybody approaching one of these projects. How are are transition technologies and the other partners that you collaborate with approaching that human capital challenge? Well, it is, it's a challenge in that you are starting to change the way your business works. And the biggest thing that blocks early adoption is, um, I don't, I hate to use the word trust, but do we trust the data that's coming? Is it it, it's, it looks like we should do something, but really should we do it? And probably one of the best examples is predictive maintenance., we see the machine is slowing down, but it's not broken yet. And there's this natural reluctance to don't fix something that's still running. And so usually what I advise to people is pay attention to these things and watch them over time. And once you start seeing that, when I see this pattern, then the next thing that happens is x. I send a guy, I have a service call, whatever. As soon as you start seeing these patterns, that's a good ex uh, time to. Doing more automation, doing more things automatically and so on. And as people, you know, celebrate the successes, because as people start to see, oh, hey, we really did see this thing in the field and we did take action and it did save the customer, those stories are your currency for, uh, transmitting the value inside the company as well as to your customers. So if I kind of net net out what you've shared with us today, firstly, your smart and connected project is more similar. To others than it is. Because they have common yes laws of physics, I think you called it. Uh, focus on time to value and finding a business case that will put some quick wins on the board and retain that executive commitment that you work so hard to build. Um, I know you've got a session at Liveworks where you're gonna be talking about considerations when starting a smart and connected product program, which is a mouthful, but like you, it says what it is., uh, tell us a little bit about what you plan to share at.. So it, it will be, um, many So there it's kind of an a laundry list of here's five mistakes or five things that I see people either not think about or make mistakes on and just wanna try to share this experience. Having watched a lot of companies go through this process and try to save companies that are just coming., um, some of the false starts and some of the, you know, avoiding some of the potholes that are out there. And that's especially true as we get into these small, medium sized businesses who are late coming to i t They can't afford to do it over, they can't afford to make a mistake. So by being able to give them, um, especially kind of a executive level roadmap of here's the things you ought to be thinking about as you get started, it, hopefully it will help them do the right thing, right from the. Well, Randy, you've got fantastic stories to share and I know our listeners who are attending Live Works are gonna look for you and pick your brain extensively about these topics. Thank you for being a great ecosystem partner to P T C, uh, just listeners. I encourage you to remember that Live Works is happening in Boston. In May the 15th to the 17th. We look forward to seeing you there. And next time on Speaking of service. Thanks for listening to the Speaking of Service podcast, brought to you by ptc. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating or review. And be sure to check out other episodes to hear new perspectives on improving life for aftermarket professionals, service teams, and the customers they support. If you have a topic of interest or want to provide feedback, At speaking of service@ptc.com or visit us at ptc.com/speaking of service.