Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing how smart digital can enable predictive maintenance for margin improvement and data-driven business models to increase the exit multiple.

In businesses where maintenance has a meaningful impact on margins, we can use artificial intelligence to predict when assets will fail in advance of any noticeable signs of a problem.  By using smart digital to prevent unplanned downtimes, we increase the company’s operational efficiency to improves its margins, for a relatively low investment in tech.

Collecting proprietary monetization data enables the development of novel business models that until recently, were impossible to deploy.  Moving from one-and-done product sales to sales that recur to continuously generating revenue are rewarded by the next buyer paying a higher EBITDA multiple.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• How margins are improved indirectly and directly.
• Using smart-tech-driven operational efficiency to improve margins.
• How to deploy predictive maintenance to minimize unplanned down times.
• The three different ways smart digital can increase the EBITDA multiple.
• The concept of data-driven business models and how they are created.
• The example of the power-by-the-hour business model developed by jet engine maker Bristol Siddeley and deployed by GE and others.

Related links you may find useful:

• Article 1: Margin Improvement with Predictive Maintenance 
• Article 2: Deploying Data-Driven Business Models for Multiple Expansion
• LinkedIn newsletter containing these and other articles
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing how smart digital can algorithmically cross sell products for customer expansion and use AI to identify new markets to enter for market expansion.

Smart digital improves existing customer expansion strategies and enables new ones for physical products, services and environments, that until now were only available to software companies.  Automatic consumable cross selling can be emulated in the industrial sector and any other sector where one product depends on another product to operate.

Using AI and data mining to discover market adjacency insights can augment or replace the traditional market expansion playbooks used today.  The candidate list of market adjacencies is derived from primary data and only gets deeper and wider with time.  Deciding on which market to expand into becomes a repeatable analytical exercise based on real customer data. And unlike traditional techniques, smart digital market expansion also determines the best product configuration and target persona for each potential new market.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

Customer expansion by upselling like a software company for non-software products.

Other types of customer expansion strategies supported by smart digital.

Case study of HP’s smart printers.

Using proprietary data from a smart product to identify market adjacencies with artificial intelligence.

How smart digital can help us identify the proper product configuration to enter a new market.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• Customer expansion by upselling like a software company for non-software products.
• Other types of customer expansion strategies supported by smart digital.
• Case study of HP’s smart printers.
• Using proprietary data from a smart product to identify market adjacencies with artificial intelligence.
• How smart digital can help us identify the proper product configuration to enter a new market.

Related links you may find useful:

• Article 1: Smart Tech Customer Expansion Enabling Automatic Cross Selling
• Article 2: Data-Driven Market Expansion Identified by Artificial Intelligence
• LinkedIn newsletter containing these and other articles
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing data-driven value creation for tech & software companies and data-driven product expansion with fintech for traditional companies.

Product expansion driven by proprietary primary customer data excerpt: When architected correctly, smart products yield proprietary primary customer data that can be used to drive low-risk product expansion.  Like Tesla, your company can also offer insurance and other high-margin, competitively priced products that precisely fit each customer’s needs.

Smart digital value creation for tech and software companies excerpt: Smart digital transformation can be applied to any company, but the type of company determines the specific tools needed for implementation.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• Using smart digital to understand who your customers are and what they need.
• How to use proprietary primary customer data to underwrite fintech products like insurance.
• Case study of Tesla Insurance.
• How smart digital transformation is applied differently to traditional companies, tech companies and software companies.
• The importance of value sims and how they are used.

Related links you may find useful:

• Article 1: Smart Digital Value Creation for Tech and Software Companies
• Article 2: Product Expansion Driven by Proprietary Primary Customer Data
• LinkedIn newsletter containing these and future articles
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing how to smart digital value creation can augment and improve these traditional value drivers.

On boosting buy & build performance excerpt: Smart digital is a new lens from which to spot add-on companies and a new way to integrate their products with the platform.  Unlike consolidating IT systems, orchestrating multiple products to work together produces not only a more innovative solution, but a less expensive one too. 

On market share expansion excerpt: This pricing optimization approach is based on pure customer data – clean and unbiased.  By using APIs or sensors to understand how customers make money with their software or physical products, pricing becomes an analytical exercise that can stand up to the scrutiny of any skeptical CFO.  This is true value pricing.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• How to make your buy-and-build strategy more profitable than your competitors’.
• Using outcomes to source add-ons and integrate their products with the platform’s.
• Case study of outcome thinking.
• The two roles smart tech can play in market share expansion.
• Example of using AI to increase the competitiveness of a medical device.

Related links you may find useful:

• Article 1: Boosting Buy & Build Performance with Smart Digital Outcomes
• Article 2: Market Share Expansion Through Product Innovation with AI
• LinkedIn newsletter containing these and future articles  
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Our guest Prabhu Soundarrajan is President Elect of the International Society of Automation where he is responsible for strategy to create a better world through automation. He has over 20 years experience as tech executive in Fortune 100 and VC/PE-backed companies with various roles including business transformation.

In this episode Prabhu and Bruce discuss:

• The concept of the digital dress up.
• The different value drivers used.
• Profile of digital dress up candidate companies.
• Case study where multiple was expanded from 10x to 15x.

Related links you may find useful:

• Prabhu's personal page
• Safety and profitability article
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing how to improve pricing optimization and customer retention by gathering primary customer data with smart tech.

On pricing optimization: Some companies use cost-plus pricing and others use competitive-based pricing, but the gold standard is value-based pricing.  Since price is exchanged for value, to get the price right we need to understand how much value the product produces… which is easier said than done.  Until recently, understanding what exactly the customer values and how much they value it is a qualitative research project at best.  But now we have virtual products – native and virtualized.  Software and tech products that can use APIs to gather the primary data needed to calculate produced value and smart products that can use sensors to gather the primary data needed to calculate produced value…

On customer retention: As we all know, it’s far more profitable to keep a customer than to acquire a new one, whether that’s to sell them more of the same or new products or services.  The absence of a direct relationship results in a loss of customer control and potentially a loss of customer without ever knowing why.  Today selling a physical product doesn’t have to mean the end of the customer relationship.  Smart products are connected to the internet and just like software, they are forever connected to the customer…

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• Why using secondary data for pricing optimization is risky and a qualitative research project at best.
• How smart apps and products can capture primary data for pricing optimization.
• Example sims and what they are.
• The limitations of customer visits for fetching primary customer data.
• The OEM business killer of not having direct customer contact.
• The competitive advantage Netflix, Autodesk and Amazon have that can now be applied to virtual and physical products.

Related links you may find useful:

• Article 1: Pricing Optimization with Primary Data
• Article 2: Customer Retention by Staying Connected to the Customer
• LinkedIn newsletter containing these and future articles 
• Season 1:Related episodes 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing the competitive advantage smart digital diligence provides the sponsor upfront in the deal cycle during the auction.

At the heart of all post-acquisition value levers is understanding the company’s customers.  The higher fidelity you have on who the customer is and what the customer does, the closer you’ll hit the mark with all you value levers, including revenue growth, pricing optimization, multiple expansion, debt paydown and informing your priorities on margin expansion and follow-on acquisitions.

This is the purpose of smart tech, to gather and transform proprietary customer data, proprietary operational data and proprietary monetization data on your customers whether they use your product in the physical or virtual world.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

• Smart products and what is smart digital value creation.
• The high technologies used in smart digital and how they differ from IT and automation.
• Capturing proprietary data, its significance and how it’s used for value creation.
• How smart digital improves an investment.
• Performing smart digital diligence.
• Connecting the dots between physical world data and virtual value models.

Related links you may find useful:

• The article, The Competitive Advantage of Incorporating Smart Digital into Diligence. 
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1: Related episodes 
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification

Our guests are André Quina, sales director with Plat4mation, an experienced control and automation engineer and Greg McKenzie, a commercial lead with Plat4mation with 22 years of manufacturing operational experience in food, automotive, and plastics.  André, Greg and Bruce discuss:

• How to leverage manufacturing operators to improve efficiency and safety.
• How WAZE-like tagging works, why it’s important and its results.
• The different benefits of a connected worker platform versus a connected machine platform.
• How a worker-centric maintenance solution is different from an AI maintenance solution.
• The importance of capturing tribal knowledge.
• Applicable use cases.
• A brewery case study including the quantified value produced.

Related links you may find useful:

• Plat4mation website
• 4industry – Plat4mation’s connected worker platform for manufacturing
• Plat4mation’s Youtube channel
• Season 2: Episodes and show notes
• Season 2 book: The Private Equity Digital Operating Partner
• Season 1: Episodes and show notes
• Season 1 book: IoT Inc
• Training: Smart  digital transformation certification