In this episode of the IoT for All Podcast, Guneet Bedi, SVP of Global Sales at Relayr, joins us to talk about how IIoT can help companies undergoing digital transformation to create sustainable, service-based business models. 

Guneet is a seasoned technology executive with an extensive background in enterprise software, IoT, and computer networking. He’s spanned roles from product management, strategy, business development, and software development at global tech companies including Cisco, Symantec, and Oracle.

To start off, Guneet gave us some background on Relayr and how they serve their customers. In the beginning, Guneet said most customers were looking for support developing and deploying IoT solutions, but for the past two years, Relayr has been supporting companies in developing solutions to create new revenue streams that make use of subscription models. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Guneet said that companies are realizing that these models are more resilient.

In particular, Guneet said that Relayr has recently integrated financing and insurance elements into their packages with great success, allowing them to support customers in getting up and running while minimizing downtime and increasing overall efficiency to reduce operational costs.

“We’ve built some really phenomenal technology,” Guneet said, “but I think we’re beginning to realize that technology is only one of the enablers, not the only enabler. And what really matters is - how do you build new revenue and build tangible outcomes.”

Although most people, including Guneet, have historically thought about insurance and accidental and personal claims, insurance companies have been doing risk analysis on industrial equipment for a while. And Guneet said Relayr is bridging that gap through IoT, bringing in the data to make those risk analysis tools much more accurate.

The struggle in industrial IoT, according to Guneet, is that it’s all still very new. While companies are now willing to talk about the work to be done in industrial settings, there’s still a great deal of uncertainty and risk involved. And when your potential customer is a market leader who’s been in business for 70 or 80 years, it can be difficult to change that mindset and culture.

Changing the conversation toward the IoT ecosystem on the whole, Guneet spoke to the need for partnerships in the IIoT space. In the industrial space, he said, the equipment that they’re working with is expected to last twenty or thirty years, making it a vastly different ecosystem than in the smart home space, where a lightbulb or switch is expected to have a much shorter lifespan. That makes partnerships in the ecosystem, particularly in the supply chain, incredibly important to meet those customer expectations.

To round out our discussion, we asked Guneet how he’d seen COVID-19 impacting the industrial IoT space as a whole and what expectations should be as things return to the new normal. Guneet said that, even now, many companies are slowing down and just waiting to see where the shortages will happen. One thing that’s sure, he said, is a greater need for solutions to remotely monitor and track assets, as managers are having to, in some cases, shelter at home and hope that their equipment is doing alright without them. The silver lining, however, is that as C-suite executives are grounded, they have time to think about the future, Guneet said, and that might mean exciting announcements coming on the heels of companies’ plans to reopen.

Interested in connecting with Guneet? Reach out to him on Linkedin!

About Relayr: Relayr is an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) powerhouse delivering the most complete solution for risk-free digital transformations. We enable industrial companies to shift from CAPEX- to OPEX-based offerings to their respective markets, providing a unique combination of first-class IIoT technology and its delivery with powerful financial and insurance offerings -- all from a single source trusted by hundreds of companies worldwide.

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Key Questions and Topics from this Episode:

(01:52) Introduction to Guneet

(03:08) Introduction to Relayr

(04:24) What does a typical customer engagement look like for Relayr?

(05:48) How does the Financial and Insurance piece play into a solution?

(08:06) Are there any recent Applications you can share?

(11:03) What are the biggest challenges you’ve experienced in the IIoT space?

(13:28) What is the role of partnerships in industrial IoT?

(16:13) What are some of the common mistakes you see companies make while developing an IoT solution?

(18:56) How does the equipment as a service model work?

(21:40) Where are you seeing IoT really transform businesses?

(23:38) How do you see COVID-19 affecting the IIoT space as a whole?

(26:12) Are there any Applications you foresee a drastic change to demand post COVID-19?

(28:39) What’s on the horizon for Relayr?