“I want to know when a client’s home needs service before they do. System monitoring gives us immediate knowledge of a component failure and in some cases the ability to fix the problem remotely. This is a significant advance in a business where service is everything.”
Ken Johnson, President of Premiere Systems
CEPro-How Remote Diagnostics Cut Overhead Costs
Ethernet and Web-powered diagnostics and service abilities prove valuable.
An integrator can sell great equipment, do top-notch installations and build strong relationships with clients. But at the end of the day, service gives one integrator the edge over another. Great service has traditionally helped differentiate custom businesses.
The overhead costs of great service, however, have been a challenge. Remote diagnostics is changing that, giving integrators more tools for streamlining the service side of their businesses.
Remote services has enabled Lava Corp., a Heber City, Utah-based integrator, to not only reduce overhead costs, but also expand its range to take more jobs outside of Utah.
Lava Corp. gets its share of second- and vacation-home projects, meaning it gets a fair share of seasonal service calls, too. Todd Westra, owner of Lava Corp., says the company gets a lot of dirty power in his market, which includes the mountain side of Aspen, Colo.
“Our biggest problem was redundant service calls, just rebooting the equipment,” he says. “And we had to go out there just do that.”
Those reboots became a seasonal expectation for Lava. “We would always play the game of expecting X number of service calls each season,” Westra explains. “Our customers would leave town for six months and expect to come back and have everything working; it wouldn’t happen. Something bad would have happened to their power.”
Many manufacturers have begun offering products that are network manageable from remote locations. Westra has been going back and adding APC’s S Type line of power conditioners with battery backups to his clients' systems, enabling dealers to reboot and power up/power off systems without sending out a service rep. This has reduced the number of truck rolls he’s had to finance, saving both time and money.
“After having just finished the biggest season of the year, we had very few service calls with the Ethernet service," he says.
Creates Opportunity for Recurring Revenue
If you ask Thad Glavin, co-founder of managed service provider Atomoo, the ability to service systems remotely provides more than just savings. It's marketable, too.
Remote diagnostics enable companies to service more clients. Glavin says installers can leverage these ever-developing technologies — as well as partner with companies like Atomoo — in order to upsell clients into extended service contracts, which will improve the value and cash flow of integration companies.
“Fact: Companies with recurring revenues sell better than companies without recurring revenues,” Glavin said during a recent Atomoo Webinar. “When companies need an exit strategy for whatever reason, having a recurring revenue stream is imperative in terms of value to an acquirer.”
Atomoo’s infrastructure makes it easier for integrators to pledge 24/7 service — and charge for it. A Windows Home Server is loaded in a client's home with remote management and diagnostics software. On its end, Atomoo uses managed service solutions from several enterprise-grade providers such as Level Platforms (LPI).
Atomoo monitors the premises full-time for potential threats and can either fix the problems itself or notify integrators. “It doesn’t eliminate all truck rolls,” Glavin says, but it does give integrators valuable information that can minimize client visits and equip them to fix problems quickly.
Tom LeBlanc contributed to this report.