IoT GUIDE

SPEAKER BIO

Carlos is currently Head of Market Intelligence and Strategic Partnerships at BICS but previously was a regional business development manager, built the go-to-market strategy, drove the sales operations and its profitability in Western Europe. Carlos is also a startup advisor and collaborates with different projects. 



He is experienced in the startup environment, digital and cloud providers, MVNx, OTTs, IoT/M2M (Transport, Smart City, Healthcare, Logistics, Telematics) and ICTs (System Integrators, Applications, Devices)

COMPANY OVERVIEW

As a leading international communications enabler, BICS is connecting the world by facilitating reliable and secure mobile experiences anytime, anywhere. Our solutions are essential for supporting the modern lifestyle of today’s device-hungry consumer – from global mobile connectivity, seamless roaming experiences and fraud prevention to global messaging and the Internet of Things.

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the Industrial IoT spotlight your number one spot for insight from industrial IoT thought leaders who are transforming businesses today, with your host Erik Walenza.

ERIK

I'm joined today by Carlos Villaneuva. Carlos is the head of market intelligence and strategic partnerships at BICS, and BICS is a leading international communication enabler. BICS connects devices around the world by facilitating reliable and secure mobile experiences.

In our previous section we focused on the technology that BICS provides.

Today we're going to look at case studies, starting in particular with one called Hanhaa. Could you give a quick overview of what Hanhaa does, and how it is using BICS today.

CARLOS

Hanhaa provides cross-border parcel tracking service, called ParceLive. Their ambition has always been to provide the most detailed, current, and useful information across the globe; they basically are working with different logistics companies like cargo containers, truckers, for remote monitoring. What they are really looking at is to make sure that the enterprises end users can track their parcels across the full journey, and how they can monitor, and offer a reliable solution to their customers. What’s happening today is that there are different system integrators that have been tasked to provide an end to end solution to improve supply chain efficiency for a global manufacturer of high end electronics. They have distribution around the world and wants every component of their supply chain to be integrated into one single management platform: this is basically the request of the market coming to a company like Hanhaa. The most important thing is how would that challenge be managed and how they could build a solution for these kind of challenges right by using their ParceLive solution.

The key here is that Hanhaa is providing tracking services that can always provide to an enterprise the specific benefits that they need. The enterprise would always be looking for a real time parcel tracking and tracing, because they need to make sure that the components that they are manufacturing and will remain within predefined parameters. When a product in transit is tampered with or is potentially facing some deviations from the route, they always would like to get some real time alerts and should be triggered in their systems. At the same time, they are facing the challenge of the fleet management.

There is a scheduled stage management problem, on how to track the trip, how to flag maintenance, how to repair the fleet of vehicles, and how to conduct the worker management and other actions. Additionally, they are working with different suppliers -- all these companies need to have some automation when they pay their orders, when they fulfill notifications, or when they fulfill their final settlement. All the different challenges may be coming from specific manufacturing companies that would like to have a global supply chain. Companies like Hanhaa, will need to deploy an end to end solution with which they can track the parcel in real time, with which they can have a scheduled Fleet Management, with which they can always have the collaboration of the different suppliers. It's about the orders, the fulfilment, and the financial settlement. We work with Hannah in solving this challenge is that we help them to make make sure that their ambition became a reality. So our global connectivity ensures that the ParceLive trackers are well connected wherever they go and whatever it happens to them.

With that in mind, Hanhaa can really provide an end to end solution for their devices and applications. Our connectivity solutions can help the system integrators to achieve competitive and well managed international roaming because their roaming offer will be as efficient and streamlined way to deploy or compliment roaming coverage of the whole world.

Our solution will allow the end to end connectivity providers to access new multi level linkage discs to a single technical and commercial relationship. This is how Hanhaa, without being an expert in providing global connectivity, can provide a reliable solution to the manufacturing companies. The roaming and the connectivity that we have, can offer Hanhaa a single window intermediary service, and management of the system integrators and roaming relationships with system integrations. So in this case Hanhaa will not need to deal with with the different connectivity providers worldwide, because the device will be always connected.

Our state of the art and easy to use environment is really going to manage all the activities needed for rapid service and rollout and easy management. From establishing their roaming agreements, we assume full financial liability, to the testing phase and billing and settlement. Meaning all the different elements that are normally required to get the mobile connectivity for the Parcelive tracking solution, would will be there already. On top of that they will need to provide with high quality services, BICS will need to make sure in that we can guarantee the quality of service and the day to day operations on their behalf.

BICS is really simplifying the day to day operations of the parcel service. a result of the combination of the challenges that Hanhaa is receiving from the different manufacturers or logistics companies, asset tracking companies, etc, is that these very large integrators and other players in the value chain can access to really core network and telecom assets, so they really reduce the lead time needed to develop a roaming global footprint from months to just a few weeks. This is really like building the fast seamless connectivity solution that powers ParceLive from Hanhaa.

ERIK

Practical use case! I was working with global telco equipment manufacturer about six years ago on a project in South East Asia helping them to evaluate their supply chain, and look at how they could be more cost competitive and provide better service in the region. One of the biggest headaches was that they lost track of equipment as it was traveling from Europe or from the US or wherever it was being assembled, through to the end customer. They were missing deadlines because they had something that was held up held up somewhere in the world. They didn't know where it was, they didn't know what the status was, they didn't have visibility into who they could contact to actually assess this. It was a huge headache across the supply chain and for the sales teams, because the sales were then having to deal with the customer around deployment delays and so forth because there were missing components, and then of course they have liability issues where they end up eating the cost due to that.

So really I think in circumstances like that it is a no brainer. But of course, the end users have to actually go through the business analysis to see how the lack of visibility into the movement of goods is impacting your business in terms of sales, in terms of supply chain costs, in terms of customer satisfaction and so forth. So it's really a critical exercise.

I guess BICS is a step away from this, so BICS is working in most cases with companies like Hanhaa, who is kind of in the middle. Are there other circumstances where you're working directly with the device manufacturer? Do you get into an advisory relationship with companies to help them understand the business case behind the value? Or is this generally very clear upfront and they don't need that level of support, they just need the connectivity?

CARLOS

The fact is that the enterprises want to really focus on the deployment of the different use cases. When we face the enterprise directly, they usually need support to deploy the end to end solution. In many cases the enterprise doesn't have the right expertise and to get together with the right partners and the right stakeholders.

We have different use cases with end users like this. For example, we met a connected watch manufacturer who wanted to embed connectivity in the watch, so when the buyer purchases the watch, he can select a data plan and then this manufacturer can invoice the buyer on a monthly basis. How can this company do this without having expertise on billing, settlement, connectivity, data plans, and cross-border connectivity, etc? What we do is to build with this manufacturer how this use case could work. If we have all the connectivity building blocks that are required, we do it on our own, if not we bring different stakeholders. So in this case watch manufacturer will need to integrate their back end systems into our connectivity platform so that they can monitor the end user life cycle and perform software updates or collect data for business intelligence. So these are the advantages and benefits that technology is bringing to these manufacturers as they are just focusing on the connected watch business. They probably won't have all the different technologies or backup systems necessary to make the use case work. We also faced another forklift manufacturer that was distributing forklifts around the world. So their need there was how to embed connectivity in this forklift for remote mountain and vertical applications.

So again, if the manufacturer has no idea of what type of device will be required, which type of technology is needed for connectivity, which kind of applications will be required to provide the right remote monitoring, we help them to put all these building blocks together and to engage with the different stakeholders.

We are not only facing those two cases, but also some others that are definitely enterprises looking at the integration piece. We also think that the service providers and integrators playing in these different vertical industries are important assets because they can bring the expertise of different parties to come up with an end to end solution.

We can talk about different other use cases or case studies where, for example, some health care companies that want to offer an application and a device that is connected to healthcare services around the world. They can do that -- they probably would have the application because they have the software with which they can really provide a healthcare solution. They could bring to market a complete end to end healthcare solution where they can really offer reliable secure and global scale health care connected device. Because this device will require device management and the healthcare company probably won't have the expertise on device management, they won't have the expertise on how to ensure the quality of the assurance the security of the information.

The next question is how do you protect the information. Nowadays, data security is becoming a crucial element. How do you protect the data streams that the sensors and devices are going to be sending to data centers? How connectivity and technology will need to enable every device to have a secure way to exchange information across different platforms and different connectivity technologies? So you see there are many challenges in every vertical industry, but each one has different challenges. One of the most important pieces or tasks that we perform at BICS is to get the challenge in enterprises and industries, and to make sure to translate those needs into technology via a connectivity solution when its required, or via putting together the right stakeholders on the table.

ERIK

Carlos, I think this is a super useful conversation for anybody that's trying to figure out how to enable global connectivity for their solution or for their customers for their operations.

If somebody wants to follow up with you, have a discussion and learn more about how you work with companies or just learn more about the topic in general, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

CARLOS

They can find me on LinkedIn, if possible. If not they can drop me always and email me. We are happy to get in touch. So please feel free to get in touch and we are happy to listen to your different challenges. We are happy to listen to the use cases and to collaborate to bring solutions to the IoT market.

Thanks for tuning into another edition of the industrial IoT spotlight. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @IotoneHQ and check out our database of case studies on http://iotone.com. If you have unique insight for a project deployment story to share. We'd love to feature you on a future edition. Write us at erik.walenza@iotone.com