Asset Tracking and Narratives That Drive Product Adoption (with Tom Dever)

Learn about asset tracking from an industry insider and building product narratives that drive adoption across a value chain. This conversation is with Tom Dever from Nimbelink, a division of Airgain where we discuss the world of asset tracking and how it’s used across various commercial and industrial industries. For the second half of the episode, I asked Nicole Young to weigh in on the conversation I had with Tom. She’s a technologist new to IoT and together, we discuss asset tracking and explore one of my favorite topics, product buy-in. Great connected products can still fail due to a lack of buy-in or adoption from each major player within the value chain for a product. That value chain includes OEMs, distributors, integrators, field technicians, and end users. Connected products will encounter a lot of resistance depending on the weakest link in that chain. We go into examples of what that successful narrative looks like using remote asset monitoring as our focus.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to conversations and connectivity. I'm Ryan Carlson, your host. This is a podcast for the IOT professionals and product leaders that are responsible for growing executing. And at times educating others about the role that conductivity plays within their organization. You may not have a job title with conductivity in it, but you've got the emotional scars to prove that you're doing the job anyways. If learning how others are harnessing conductivity in the industries they serve. You're in luck in this conversation. I'm talking with Tom Dever from Nimbelink division of Airgain, where we discuss the world of asset tracking and how it's used across various commercial and industrial industries. As a bonus. After the interview, I asked Nicole Young to weigh in on the conversation. She's a technologist new to IOT. And together we reflect on the asset tracking discussion with Tom and explore one of my favorite topics about how great connected products can still fail due to a lack of buy-in or adoption from each major player within the value chain for a product from OEM to distributor, to integrator, to feel technician all the way to the end user connected products will encounter a lot of resistance to learn more about asset tracking from an industrial insider or an industry insider it's a little bit of each or building connected product narratives that drive adoption across the value chain. You're in the right place. This recording is brought to you by Soracom a global connectivity service provider that believes the fastest way to cost savings and scale is when your customers are in full control of connectivity operations. Experience, self service pay as you go global connectivity without a contract today at Soracom.io, signing up for an operator count takes less than a minute. Now onto the interview.

Ryan: 1:48

I'm here with Tom Dever he works at a company called Nimbelink. Something that I've known as a Midwestern technologist. You kind of grew up with the companies that are around you, and Airgain brought on Nimbelink, how are you doing, man? Doing well. Awesome. Tell me what it is that Nimbelink does for the Internet of Things space.

Tom: 2:06

Yeah, so NimbeLink provides the connectivity piece to get your data from your device up to the cloud through cellular.

Ryan: 2:13

So you make, uh, the little modems, right,

Tom: 2:16

The modem products and the antennas now with Airgain purchasing NimbeLink a year ago, year and a half ago. So,

Ryan: 2:22

uh, one of the things that I found kind of a lifesaver in the world, having developed products is going through the certification process, right? And so the big value proposition on Nimbelink is that your cellular modules are already pre-certified.

Tom: 2:39

They're end device certified it means you can take that device, integrate it into a sensor or some type of gateway product. Uh, put a sim card in from AT&T, Verizon or Soracom or anybody else. And it's already certified on the networks, so there's no further seller certification necessary. And most of our oil and gas customers that are here at the. Uh, went with ni link modems because they didn't know anything about cellular. Yeah. And quite frankly, they don't care about cellular. They just want to get the data from this device to the cloud. And that's it. Isn't that it though? I mean,

Ryan: 3:10

it's the cumbersome, heavy lift in the middle. Like, just solve the problem. Just

Tom: 3:14

get this data over here and then I could do stuff with it that, that can, It's more complicated than that. But yeah, it's like that's the piece that we hope to take some of the complication out of, at least for the cellular. Or concern.

Ryan: 3:26

And there's another product that, uh, I'm, I'm aware of. And it's the asset tracking stuff that you're doing with your cellular modules. Tell me a little bit about how, what types of problems people are solving with that device and, and like its battery life and things like that.

Tom: 3:40

Absolutely. Yeah. Our asset trackers were actually formed originally out of, uh, trying to track things that you don't want to move. So if you have a box of tools on a job site and once a day, you just wanna make sure that box of tools is still where you put it. Mm-hmm. and that it hasn't. Um, once a day, it tells you, I'm still right where you, wherever you thought I was. If it starts to move, it's got accelerometers in it that immediately wake it up and tell you where it's going. Oh, so when you've got Yeah. Hundreds of millions dollars worth of tools on a job site, you know exactly where they are at any, any one moment in time. See, I keep

Ryan: 4:12

thinking about asset tracking as things in motion But yours is it, it, it just actually does what? Like a keep alive and then it only triggered on an. Will it then go, Oh, hey, um, now I'm broadcasting live. Cuz you're gonna wanna see exactly where

Tom: 4:29

this thing is going. I'm moving and I shouldn't be And so now here's where I am. Um, the other thing that, uh, that we've, we've expanded that out in other vertical industries. Um, so some of our asset trackers also go on to like, uh, uh, rail cars. Okay. To monitor events and incidents and tell you where the door open door. So that's the rail cars and stuff

Ryan: 4:50

like that, that's putting additional sensors or things like that in there. Correct. So are you doing anything with like cold chain, where you're looking at temperature? Yeah.

Tom: 4:57

That's another big one that we've started to, to take a look at and, and start to have customers want to, uh, prototype our, our devices on and, and start to deploy them is cold chain. You know, making sure the temperature stays below a certain degrees at all times during the travel. And also, uh, sometimes this, uh, this stuff that you have that you're watching in curl. Passes through multiple, uh, three pls or multiple handlers. Mm-hmm. of the cargo. And so if it does go above temperature at some point in the process, what three PL is to blame for that going outta temperature? So it's also insurance. Yeah. Uh, the insurance companies wanna know that, so they know if this did go outta temperature, where did it go outta temperature when? And then who is to blame for going outta

Ryan: 5:40

temperature? I would imagine that you have the opportunity to just like, am I. If the device could just be sitting there, it's only if it drops or goes above, what is it, Like 52 degrees for over four hours. That's when it goes, Hey, hey, I need some attention.

Tom: 5:57

Correct. There's an, there's edge intelligence, uh, built into the devices accessible by the customer through APIs. That's cool. So customers don't have to go and write their own firmware to be able to talk to the device or change the way the device is behaving. They can do that through the cloud services, APIs we offer. So if the

Ryan: 6:15

default state for most devices is not broadcasting anything, right? It's only when something goes wrong, which is a smaller percentage of the time than anything else, I could see that, where that's where, uh, you know, if someone had the SORACOM sim in and then another using a pay as you go plan. So they're only paying for a very small amount of data. And so it's only when things go wrong that you have to pay anything other. You're not right versus like the cell I carry in my pocket.

Tom: 6:44

talking all the time, right? Yeah.

Ryan: 6:46

Well the bill is, The bill is the bill.

Tom: 6:48

So the SORACOM pays you go. Plan is is perfect for our devices, you know, and the other part of our devices are all battery operated, so there's no power supply to these devices, wasn't it 10 years? So we're trying to get 10 to 15 years worth of battery life by these devices. So really the cellular link only comes up when necessary because the cellular is the, by far, the highest power. In the entire system is turning that cellular on getting attached to a tower and sending data. That's the most power the system's gonna burn. And so yeah, we're, we're off as much time as we can Yeah,

Ryan: 7:19

that makes a lot of sense. When you're telling people about Nimble Link and the asset tracking, what is the one thing that stands out? You wish everyone was, just walk away with, What is the, what is the thing that you know, you,

Tom: 7:31

you're the most proud of? Most proud of? Okay. The fact that we can customize these in a very quick amount of time, so the trackers meet 80, 90% of what customers need. There's always a 10 to 20% little addition that needs to happen. And from a firmware and a hardware and a cloud perspective, we've designed our software be to modify very quick and easily to get customers exactly what they're looking for from their device, and then add that in as a feature set for them. I'd imagine

Ryan: 8:00

that with every unique request that comes in, you're like, Oh, that's a good idea. Future generations of customers now benefit from that Good idea as well.

Tom: 8:08

Correct. Once we integrate it into the api, it's accessible to all our customers. Well, fantastic.

Ryan: 8:13

If I wanted to learn more about NI link, where would I go?

Tom: 8:15

Tom? Yeah. NI link.com. Is that it? That's the easiest one to go to.

Ryan: 8:19

Yeah. Easy enough. Well, thanks for your time and sharing a little bit about ni. Thanks,

Tom: 8:23

Ryan. Appreciate it. You got it?

Nicole: 8:24

Hey everyone, my name is Nicole Young, and I'm here with Ryan. Ryan's a good colleague of mine and I'm fairly new to iot, so I, I love getting into these types of conversations with him.

Ryan: 8:35

And we just finished listening to Tom Dever talk about Airgain's asset tracking and the mm-hmm. modem technology that they have. So this is a great opportunity to, have a little bit of a discuss.

Nicole: 8:48

Are we a partner with Nimbelink?

Ryan: 8:50

We are. Yeah. It's, uh, Nimbelink is an, uh, a company that Airgain purchased, so they just split out into three different brands. Mm-hmm. And so there's an Airgain Embedded is their modems. Airgain okay. Integrated is their connect and asset trackers and Airgain antenna is, well, it's their antennas.

Nicole: 9:13

Okay. That's pretty cool. So, what I'm learning is that there's a lot of stuff that has to happen in between

Ryan: 9:23

I know, right? It's

Nicole: 9:24

hard and it's complicated and difficult. And if you're someone that's just trying to. Do the thing and, and, uh, you know, make the technology work. You're not really trying to be concerned about all of the hard stuff in between. You just kind of wanna get to the good stuff at the end.

Ryan: 9:44

Well, I mean, that's the thing, uh, Tom said the people in oil and gas, which was actually quite a few vendors at that event, he's like, they all use our modules because customers don't care about cellular. They just want the connection to work. and when we spoke with, uh, Titu, uh, Botos mm-hmm. from NeuronicWorks and he was talking about the certification process and the minute you've got a radio and you're putting in an device, you know, there's all of these things that you need to do in order to, uh, get all of your different regulatory certifications now. the, the modems that they have, a bunch of the certifications are done on it, but then you still put it in your device and there's always going to be another layer of certifications that any device has the option of going through. The, the thing that I loved about, What he was talking about, and this isn't unique to what that Nimble Link product line was doing to asset tracking, is the idea of thinking through the device logic to reduce battery consumption.

Nicole: 10:52

Yeah, I I did

Ryan: 10:53

notice that part. Yeah. Like it can do all of its sensing on very little power and an you can have some onboard intelligence and it only fires up the radio. when it needs to, when the event has occurred. The idea that a cellular device can run 10 to 15 years is pretty wild. I just tried to buy, uh, a smoke. smoke detector. Mm-hmm. in my house, and they have a plug-in option, but you don't even have the option to switch out the battery in a lot of cases. it just has a pre-built battery, says it's good for 10 years. You write down the date that you pull up little, little plastic tab and you know, so I've got a, alarm that's, you know, 20 or 32, 20, 32, that's when it needs to be replaced. And I'm like, I can't even think that far ahead. But yeah, you know, I, I think about how many times, we, we aren't planning that far ahead and i o t when you've got devices. out in, uh, a field or in a beehive or like out in these remote areas. I mean, the fire alarm is right outside my room, and I can't, you know, always remember to switch out those batteries or stay on top of it. Um, you know, it, it chirp, chirp and then you, you know, you hit it with a broom and then you end up just pulling the battery out and like, I'll replace this later. Mm-hmm. Um, although I suppose it's a business function. So what are so what are some, what are, what are some of the questions that, that you might have about this idea of asset tracking or, um, the stuff that they. Yeah, I

Nicole: 12:35

thought that, so asset tracking is something that I feel like we're digging into a lot and I'm, I'm learning a lot about, and I thought it was interesting. Um, and I think you kind of pointed out that he was saying, um, for theft, like it's, it's a, it's a great, uh, use for making sure that different products and, and things aren't, aren't being stolen and moving. Um, I also was thinking more so along the lines of like, things that are in motion, they're moving, being able to track, that they're getting from point A to point B. But, I guess it's not even a question, just, just, it's interesting to me that, just having kind of like that extra layer of security and insurance on, uh, these big assets that are probably super expensive to replace and making sure that they're. um, being taken or stolen and being able to track them when they are?

Ryan: 13:31

for sure. About four years ago I worked on an asset tracking project, and the goal there was they wanted to know where the deliveries were, so it was only while it was in motion, so the device had an accelerometer. and actually it was a finely tuned one, but it was, it was like built into this like hockey puck device. Mm. That would go inside the box and inside the box. it was a very expensive thing that shows up at someone's house and you wanted to make sure that it wasn't damaged because Fred and and the, the point of the accelerometer was in part to know where is my delivery. That was actually a bonus. The real thing it was for was, did it get damaged in transit? Hmm. How, how hard of a shock or a force did this box receive? And, uh, because sometimes they'd have to send through. Third party carriers. Sometimes they'd have their own service and delivery people, uh, bring it. But that was a huge problem, was around claims. And it was specifically around liability and insurance claims. So getting to send this little tiny hockey puck inside the shipment, it didn't have to last all that. right. Just would pull a little tab, throw it in and go. And so it was almost disposable. But with the, when you knew the price of the actual claims processing of like trying to diagnose who was responsible. Mm-hmm. the cost was insignificant when we were Yeah. Talking about little tiny devices. And some of'em are even reusable too, especially if you sent your own service driver out there. So you get into this whole like iott. begins to have value. If you put it within the context of, oh, we actually have service people for 75% of our deliveries, they're gonna show up and take the, the stuff that was dropped off, and so they can recover that device. Mm-hmm. right? So it's not a sunk cost. And so there's this big financial equation that goes well beyond cost coverage, how much does it cost to produce the thing? It's, well, how big of a problem are we solving?

Nicole: 15:48

Yeah, so let's talk more about, cuz I'm, I'm fairly new to. All things iot, ot. So what,

Ryan: 15:56

like you did, you didn't call it io so we're good there,

Nicole: 16:01

So, um, but I think the thing that helps me to kind of understand the significance of these technologies the most is the case, case studies, the, the way they are being used and how it's, it's not just. Oh, we're just connecting this thing. It's, there is impact across the entire, um, Value chain. So there, it, there's impact to be had across from start to finish on these that are, it's saving time, it's saving money, it's giving more security, more insurance on mm-hmm. What, what these companies are doing. I just think having those, those case studies and really being able to see, in that way always helps me to kind of understand just how valuable having these connectivity and, and devices.

Ryan: 16:51

What's facinating is actually actually walking companies through the use case for connectivity, the Y I O T mm-hmm. then it's usually how do we make money, save money, recoup our costs, look what is the monetization angle. Mm-hmm. uh, and, and then it gets into the, okay, how do we do it? Mm-hmm. although it's surprising how many times spook, how are we gonna do it? And then they're stuck scrambling. Okay. Turns out no one wanted this. So the right way to go is to ask why iot. and then how has this impact the business? But my point is that when we're talking about that whole value chain, i t is often the adoption fails. Mm-hmm. and it's, it's usually based off of the weakest link. And so if an, if a, a manufacturer, like a big company says, we're gonna connect our thing. Okay. Why? are we connecting because we want to be progressive and innovative, or is it that the person at the very end is the one who needs the connectivity? In that case, you know, the, the foreman loses his bonus, it comes outta his paycheck if the tools are stolen. Mm-hmm. Right. And it makes it a lot harder to prove insurance claims. You know, the, there's, there's a whole cascading series. Of impact. So it makes sense that, yeah, we, we sell a tool chest that's got an asset tracker in it, or we sell asset trackers that can magnetically go in a tool chest da da. Great. We've got a great use case here, but there's a lot of companies that say we're gonna connect a thing and then they, they go and they go to the end customer and they say, Hey, this is the thing we're gonna build. And you might get some customers going, yeah, I could see some value. But then they, then you actually have to look at how do they buy the product, and a lot of times it's through a distributor or a channel. So if they're not buying it direct and you don't build value into this connected product for the person that's selling it to the end user, it doesn't matter how much research you did. because, uh, I've seen far too many, uh, distribution channels go, we're gonna keep selling the same thing we've always been selling. You're rocking the boat, you're adding cost to it, you're adding complexity. My service guys just don't know how to troubleshoot a network connection. So how about I just keep selling the same thing we've been successful at and stop trying to push this on me. And so what you find is going through that y iott exercise. And when I say value chain, We'd go through an exercise. We'd say, okay, you are making a thing. How do you know why you're making what you're making? How do people buy it? Okay. Always who's, who's, you know, it's the, the, the customer or the who's the buyer and who's the user, and is there an intermediary? And so then you talk through and saying, well, what is the distributor looking for? They want. higher profits. They want, you know, ease of use. You know, does the, we have to think about does this make their service business easier? Uh, so you think about the people in that value chain, and you have to think about why does everyone get their cookie? Uh, and because it's, it's the, the one group, if you go through that whole value chain and find someone who has their object, it's the path of least resistance. It's just surprising how often it's gonna go no, unless you got a grand slam. You know? And in fact, the only way I've seen a lot of these products that have no value for the distributor connected products that end clients, they're the ones who are going to their outlet, whoever they buy their stuff and go, I want this. I saw it. I. and, and it's, they kind of get dragged into the future. Mm-hmm. because change is hard. Right. Yeah. So that's where I see connectivity really still running into a lot of challenges is, thinking through, Not just the operational, now that you've sold the thing, it's still the how do we get people to adopt the thing. Yeah. And I feel like I've totally been rambling

Nicole: 21:06

No, that's, that's a good point. And I think, you know, I see this in the adoption of many different types of technology, but I feel like a different level of complexity here that it does. everyone in the entire chain. And, how you have to kind of get everyone to, to be on board and to see the value in it. So I can see why that would be super difficult So how do you feel like, were you saying that you, you think that. there's a specific type of party that usually says no.

Ryan: 21:39

it's whoever isn't being considered in that value proposition when you, it's, that's such a dorky, nerdy term. Well, let's see your value proposition. Uh, if you are not helping someone make money, save money, save time. You. If you can't think about the emotional win that people will feel every single person in that chain, how does this make their life easier? That's where the adoption challenge will be. It. I mean, it could be all the way down to the service technician. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Hey boss, this is like taking three times as long to put in. This is really dumb. Uh, you know, we keep coming out. We're actually making more service calls, not less. So if, if everyone doesn't have buy-in, that's where you can expect the pushback. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's why I really recommend people go through that whole value chain conversation before they even commit to building the connected thing. Mm-hmm. because you can be a hundred percent right and a hundred percent wrong all at the same time. Right. Great ideas die and it's usually not because of a technology. that's where I think the asset tracking is a very approachable story. Mm-hmm. right. Once upon a time. there was a construction company that had tool thefts from their 50 different job sites. They'd have, mm-hmm. and roughly 12% of them. And each time that happened, upwards of$6,000 of tool losses would occur. Now, that wasn't actually the real problem. The real problem was that they had slowdowns on the job. They had to move tools from another site to go and continue work, and it wasn't the insurance claim. Sure. That was some hassle, but just knowing that there was something happening because where there's smoke, whereas there's a little bit of theft, there's probably a lot more theft that's going on. Mm-hmm. So if you have the opportunity to identify that, because it starts with one, what they find at job sites, it's one small. Than another one. Than another one. And so by the time you actually really notice something's gone, a whole lot of other theft has already occurred. So with asset tracking, they're identifying theft early. Things are moving when they're not supposed to be moving before it gets to the big heist. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. right? The thing that really sets the job back, and that's what pays the bills. And so in a world of asset tracking, it's actually solving that problem. And so you can, it's like, see the business owner, the claims guy, the person who's getting the thing built, you know, all of them benefit when that can change, right? can I tell that that story cuz it's a transformation And I think that's the thing that we forget about IOT and about any technology is that technology when it can transform how we do so. I think that's really where we can see the adoption at multiple levels, for sure. Yeah. Thanks for attending my Ted talk.

Nicole: 24:52

No, that's cool. I feel like we could talk about it for forever, honestly, but I do think I learned a lot today.

Ryan: 25:01

All right. Well, next time we'll see if you've got more questions and, and maybe there's some answers. Okay. All right. Thanks, Nikki. Thanks.