Supply Chain
Technology Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

IoT adoption, supply chain, data analytics, edge computing, automation, contact tracing, remote work, asset tracking, RFID, sensor data, business case, innovation, market intelligence, Compass Intelligence, Stephanie Atkinson.

SPEAKERS

Stephanie Atkinson, Premsai Sainathan

Premsai Sainathan  00:00

Welcome to Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. In this episode, we speak with Stephanie Atkinson, founder and CEO of Compass intelligence, a boutique market research and advisory firm providing market intelligence and consulting services to companies around the globe. Stephanie shares with us the biggest advancements she’s seen around IoT adoption in 2020 data analytics strengths and also winning IoT models in supply chain and logistics. Hi. Welcome to Roambee supply chain technology podcast today, we have with us a special guest, Stephanie Atkinson, from Compass intelligence, when you talk about supply chain technology, the one person who really tracks the space and knows everything that’s happening, possibly about IoT is Stephanie Atkinson. She is one of the 50 most influential women in the Internet of Things space, and she’s also a great thought leader who has been featured on CNN Money Wall Street Journal, and is also a family of face at shows like the IoT world, CS, MWC, Americas and so on. Welcome Stephanie to the show.

Stephanie Atkinson  01:30

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to jump into the discussion today.

Premsai Sainathan  01:35

Awesome. Today, I would love to pick your brain a lot about the trending technologies that are there in the space, especially during this year of the pandemic, which has been hard for most businesses, and we’ll probably walk our way down through some of your interesting observations at specific or broad levels when it comes to IoT, not only in supply chain, but maybe other spaces as well. With that said, I want to kick this off with asking you about this year 2020. It is the year of the pandemic. Many businesses have suffered. Innovation has definitely been a little slow and possibly put on the back foot by most companies. So what in your observation has been, possibly the biggest advancement you have seen in IoT this year?

Stephanie Atkinson  02:32

I would say, is that there are specific companies that are leveraging and looking at IoT because of COVID, they don’t have the manpower. They don’t have the humans in the offices or at the production floor or at the manufacturing facility. And so if you start from there, for businesses that have a good number of people that are doing things, they may be looking for automation more than ever. So I feel like this is not only a time to take advantage of the fact that IoT could really bring another layer of you know, removing that human, removing that risk, removing that safety, the safety issues that come with having more people, and really leveraging IoT from an automation perspective across the supply chain, to really have visibility and see where you can leverage that replacement. That’s where I think that the industry is. We’re seeing a little bit of a uptick, especially in the industrial side. So for energy, utilities, transportation, manufacturing, those particular industries are seeing, I think, a higher level of interest in for some of those projects that were put on hold or in the middle of just kind of moving slowly now, there is a much higher interest in, okay, maybe we should be looking at this because of COVID. So that’s the big shift I’ve seen this year. And of course, having everybody, or a good portion of your workforce working from home, is just making those adjustments. What systems, software, applications, security, are we leveraging or accessing, you know, from the office, and what does our home kind of workstation look like? Those are small factors that impact, you know, some of the IoT solutions that are kind of out there today.

Premsai Sainathan  04:29

Stephanie, so what he’s saying is, you’re kind of drawing a parallel to basically remote working and the larger use of IoT. So the first revolution that actually allowed all of us to work remotely in a pandemic like this was actually the Internet revolution, and now you actually have not only a remote working culture that is that is building on, but also the fact that you have to actually communicate with your goods and assets which are around the. Field that is, and you’re not even in the office. So that’s actually even harder. And the Internet of Things is possibly the the next big revolution, which is actually being driven by the pandemic rather than by being stifled by the pandemic, right?

Stephanie Atkinson  05:17

That is correct. And the other, the other kind of factor that we’ve seen is that IoT is also being looked at as a way to support in contact tracing, contactless solutions, and so as we seek to do more contact lists and more focus on safety and mitigation and risk, this is just an application or an opportunity for us to really look at where IoT might be able to step in and take away some of that burden from a workforce perspective. You know, we see that, you know, corporations, businesses, and especially across the supply chain, they’re rethinking, they’re leasing agreements. They’re rethinking who goes into the office, who goes into the factory, who goes into the supply chain or the the office, and who stays at home. So it was almost like what we saw with the government, where we saw only essential workers that were out there. Now, corporations and businesses are starting to rethink through that, which are our essential workers that actually have to be in the office or in the factory floor or wherever they’re at, right in the shop floor, so that that is also taking place. And then, from a workforce management perspective, we are relying more on software. We are relying more on data and data analytics more than anything. So this is just we are right at the cusp of this, really spurring an IoT growth. And with all the other things that are kind of taking place right now, with 5g and edge computing, these are all we are seeing kind of an opportunity for all of these things to come together and really support and advance. You know, some of the things that we need to feel safe, to be safe and to still have visibility into the supply chain.

Premsai Sainathan  07:06

Excellent Stephanie, and talk about data analytics and edge computing, and that’s something I want to discuss more specifically with you as we move along. However, I want to kind of switch gears a little bit and focus a little bit on the space that I’m possibly a little more familiar with, so maybe I can get some deeper insights from you, which is IoT for supply chain. So when you talk about supply chain, or say distribution and logistics, there is a huge demand for IoT. There’s no doubt about that. This is mainly because you’re not only interacting with objects which are in your workplace or in your manufacturing plant, but they’re actually outside your enterprise, outside your control, control frame, right? So in that in context, there’s a lot of companies who are now investing in IoT technology to monitor their shipments. You know whether it’s domestic or it’s international. In that context, what, Which model do you think is actually poised to win? And when I say which model, I’m specifically talking about two models that are actually working in this IOT space, which is one is the aggregation of sensor data based on all of the ELD devices that are there on trucks, and aggregation of data of all the, all the temperature tracking systems and any, any IoT sensor that is there on a shipment, versus companies who are actually putting their own sensors into the shipment, the whole contradiction that we have noticed in the space is that the companies who are aggregating data are saying that they will be able to scale very fast because they are not deploying a sensor per shipment, while the companies which are actually deploying sensors In every shipment are saying that I’m deploying a sensor because I want accurate data, and I don’t want to rely on anybody else in the chain of custody to give me that data. So when you look at these two models, Stephanie, what are your thoughts on what is poised to basically take the IoT in supply chain world by storm.

Stephanie Atkinson  09:43

I think we’re probably looking at a combination of the two and and we like to think of things like, really more instead of a use case, really more around the business case for a very small company. We’ll take this for a very small company, right? They, um. They might have a different they might only have a few shipments, so it might make sense for them to to really go about it with kind of the self model, right? But for companies that are really looking at scale and having a complete visibility across their supply chain, the cost of hardware in the devices and the sensor the sensor technologies have have really gone down to affordable levels where you can aggregate that data, you can have a holistic view of that supply chain. And I think in those cases, with many IoT solutions, you are looking to third parties, and it’s generally more than one vendor that you’re working with. It may be the connectivity piece. It may be the hardware piece. It may be the platform or the software or the management platform of those devices. And in some cases you might you might be interfacing with one vendor, but there may be multiple vendors involved in the background that are part of that full IoT solution. So from an aggregation perspective, you know, for especially for large organizations that have a high volume of shipments, have a high volume of assets moving. And maybe they’re not just tracking the asset itself, but they’re tracking different features and functionality as that assets moving. You mentioned the monitoring, right, temperature, dust, whatever. There are so many different metrics that can be tracked as part of that sensor system that could be completely vital. And it comes down to the business case. Is it saving me money? Is it reducing risk? Is it reducing insurance loss shortages? And you know, there are a whole list of kind of use cases that come out of this, but the business case, to me, is more important as you really start to think about the economics. And sometimes it’s there are more qualitative factors that come out that aren’t just necessarily tied to budget or cost savings, or am I making money now because I’m offering something new to my customers. But it may come down to more qualitative. Am I improving the safety of my workers? Am I reducing reducing insurance requirements, because that assets moving, or that fleet is being managed a more, you know, more realistic and real time level? So there’s a lot of things that come into play. But I think that we’re probably, you’re going to fall somewhere in the middle, and it really depends on the business case for each particular company.

Premsai Sainathan  12:30

Understood. And in that context, Stephanie, I would like to touch upon asset tracking when you talked about the business ROI, asset tracking has been the early 2000s right companies are still talking about RFID Two decades later. What do you think is the reason that asset tracking has still not possibly scaled at the pace that it should have two decades later. Is there something that is holding us back in terms of the technology, or is it an implementation problem, or is it something to do with the fact that the business ROI has not been aligned with it too well?

Stephanie Atkinson  13:18

Yeah, definitely. You know, as companies are looking to deploy, they’re doing things at smaller scale. They want to try things out. They want those KPIs to be proven, and they’re very cautious in their approach. I do see that we’re seeing, I would say, out of all of the IoT solutions, asset tracking and fleet tracking are the heavier hitting solutions across the IoT market. In terms of adoption, legacy, it’s been around for quite some time. You mentioned RFID. We’ve been doing this for a very long time. Before that, we started talking about machine to machine and IoT, right? These are all things that we’ve we’ve become really accustomed to. But I think for some businesses, it comes down to challenges around distributed systems, or being able to have a seamless way to manage and have visibility across all of the different locations and all across different divisions or even offices. So sometimes it’s a logistic problem. When we’re helping companies with their logistics or their supply chain tracking, right? That’s those are some of the challenges that we see. I think also companies are very you know, over the past few years, some of the drawbacks has really been more around the concern with security, and it really depends on the assets. If the assets are high value assets, and there is, you know, security or a compromised, you know, maybe some kind of hacking that takes place, some of these more politicized, you know, there. In the media, that they start to put a little bit of fear in large corporations and businesses to not really push forward because they have fears in the security side, is, if there’s a breach, you know, what do I do? This is really a risk that I may not be willing to take, right? So those are other factors that are coming into play also, as much as we think this is simple, there are some complexities as you start to scale and based on where the assets are, you know, connectivity may not be the same or wherever all of those assets are. Other things that might come into play around those assets in terms of where they’re located, and may come into, you may come into some challenges in terms of managing those devices, securing those devices. So there’s there, there is a wide range of things that are part of the reason why we don’t see this is taken off like crazy. The other the last piece, of course, is, is budget right with COVID too, projects are now being the priority is changing. You know, we are looking for ways to improve safety. So I think for for businesses, especially anyone that’s really offering IoT solutions to businesses and government, it may just be a shift in how you communicate this, the safety that will come as as a result of this, the mitigation and risk that will improve because of this, and some of those things will really help facilitate that adoption in the long in the long run.

Premsai Sainathan  16:39

All right, so, Stephanie, you talked about subtracting. Now let’s revisit the two things that you talked about. One is data, analytics and and and, and edge edge computing and edge data. Can you tell us what is actually for those who don’t understand this too well, between data analytics and big data analytics.

Stephanie Atkinson  17:11

So you know, we’ll first start with data so with some of the advancements around artificial intelligence, IoT as a whole, the sensor systems that the cost structure, the intelligence that’s that’s being developed at the chip set level, at the sensor level, all of the hardware side has also given growth to the fact that we’re able to collect, analyze and act on data at the end point, device near the end point, device at the office, at the factory, in the building, or very close to real time. So what’s shifting is, is the need for that real time data intelligence. That’s the big driving factor. We are not collecting data. For the sake of collecting data, we need to kind of shift to that level, to where the data that we’re collecting, we’re looking at correlations. We’re looking at anything that might stand out. I’m trying to put things a little bit more normal terms, instead of getting into the deep metrics, but we are looking at ways to leverage this data in an intelligent way that might spark an action or an alert, or it may be human, that might be involved in that. It may be automatic, automatically responded to through systems or through software. It might be a combination of both human and machine that comes into play in terms of that data, but the data analytics piece is becoming a much more important piece of the supply chain, and we’re starting to realize we can slap a sensor on an asset, and it’s not just for tracking and monitoring, but It might be for a whole host of other things that we’re collecting. Excuse me, about that asset that is now giving us that we’re we’re continuously learning, we’re adjusting, we’re changing the way we do our business. So that is probably the most powerful thing around data analytics, is that we’re constantly learning we’re improving our systems, and so we didn’t have that a while back. We were we were collecting a lot of data, but we weren’t doing much with it. So the data analytics piece is a very important role, and edge plays a highly important role, because that brings the real time information and actions that we need for that asset, and that’s what shifting with edge computing. We’re not pushing everything to the cloud, and it might take some time for us to actually figure out what we’re going to do with that data. We’re now pushing things closer to the endpoint device, or closer to the network or closer to our intel. Agents, right? So we can actually do some things in an automatic, automatic fashion, and for certain critical operations, we’re able to really respond and predict, right? The prediction piece is very important around maintenance and risk and safety and all of that. So there are a lot of factors that are coming into play, but because we are adopting edge computing, there are certain solutions that really provide additional benefits because of that real time information.

Premsai Sainathan  20:33

That’s very interesting, because in our own experience at Roambee, it all began with, where is my shipment, and once we started giving them the data, the next question is, I don’t really care what I’m going to do just by knowing where my shipment is, I want to know how it is, how it is going To affect its arrival. And now customers are actually advanced. To start talking about what, tell me what is happening at network level. So what, which part of which region do I focus on when it comes to my supply chain? So I think your point, it’s very interesting when you talk about data analytics, that just by the quantum of data that we are actually collecting right now, the traditional way of Data Analytics does not work anymore, and you are now dealing with millions of billions of data points which you actually need to make sense of and provide it to a user, or, you know, the operations person, or the business stakeholder in a form where they can actually act on it.

Stephanie Atkinson  21:48

Yeah, and I think the other advancements that we’re seeing is the visual interface of the reporting of the information, of the intelligence is it’s making a lot of these operations managers very, very happy, because not only are they collecting the data and analyzing the data and acting on the data, but the reporting and the visuals and the charting and being able to really see things on maps and to click in on things and really see other features and functionality and data points About that asset. It’s very exciting. It’s more interactive. They are starting to make decisions as a result of seeing these charts and these graphs and being able to map out things. And it’s just, it’s, it’s providing another level. I mean, some people are very visual, right? They can look at data all day and it just bog their mind. But when you put that into a system where your it, or your ot managers, or your operations managers can log in and visually see all of the reporting, as opposed to just numbers and text. It makes it just provides another level of insight and some and it’s, it’s really exciting, I think the the advancements with the software side of it and the platform side of it is really advanced in the industry and very beneficial to operations managers.

Premsai Sainathan  23:09

So Stephanie, you run Compass intelligence, which is a market intelligence at y3 and an insights firm, which is also well known for the IoT AI machine learning and data analytics space related awards. What is the process that you follow when you’re actually looking for innovators? What is that spark that actually gets you when you look at this solution or technology and say, wow, you know these guys are going to change the space?

Stephanie Atkinson  23:44

You know what we we see some big companies that are standing out, and a lot of them may have most people, especially in the early term, have never heard of or they’re only heard of in certain regions, especially when you think about things on global basis. But what gets us excited is we are speaking with vendors throughout the year right and executives and having calls and meetings. And we are sent quite a few press releases and information on client wins and projects that are in the works. And that’s where we get to see real live deployments and real live projects that are happening. And in those cases, you know, let’s, let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in IoT that’s fluff, that’s marketing that is very much superficial. So when we start to see the real live client projects, the real live business cases, slash use cases, those are the things that really get us excited as following the market, because we’re always talking about, when is this going to scale, when is this really going to deploy at a much larger number of units or number of connections? And so the innovation, we believe, is. Is not only seeing the actual live projects and things that are happening, but also learning about some of the things that they’ve designed, developed, and like Roambee itself and how things are taking off in just that exponential growth, maybe the solutions was was developed, and then maybe you started working on the supply chain, and then it started taking off in some logistics specific business cases. So we’re starting to see a lot of evolution in really adoption kind of take off from each other. And so that’s exciting from an innovation perspective. You know, a lot of what we’ve seen this year has really been more around edge computing, Edge analytics, data analytics, so we’re getting really, really smart in that space. So we’re starting to talk to a lot of new and startup companies, companies that not only are startups, but they’re starting to partner with last year’s award winners, or the year before his award winners, and then multiple award winners at Compass intelligence, for our IoT awards, are starting to partner together. And so that’s also exciting. So we’re seeing a lot of names we’re very familiar with start to leverage alliances and partnerships and go to market to the customers in a joint fashion. And so that’s also exciting. So we’re getting to witness a lot of the innovation throughout the year, but we honor the companies, you know, in the spring and in the fall.

Premsai Sainathan  26:32

And that’s very interesting, because I see your awards, I see not only some of the large, established players who are doing something really cool, but you also have some, some some startups who are actually doing that. So now I kind of understand where this, this whole mix comes from, because you’re actually tracking the live projects that are happening the field. And I think that’s, that’s that’s a very, very, very nice way for you to actually look at what merits and award and what what doesn’t that brings me Stephanie to actually my final question. This is more about, you know what? So you’re talking about tracking the space. What actually got you interested in IoT and data analytics and edge computing. Sorry if I was to ask you this, and this is kind of like a personal question, but is there, is there, like a geek in Stephanie that?

Stephanie Atkinson  27:34

Oh my gosh, yeah, definitely. Well, I can tell you, you know, my background, my education is in supply chain logistics, and so it’s crazy because I did not go into that when I started my career. Well, I kind of did working at Alcatel in the R and D group, but it evolved, and I kind of stayed on that tech track, right? I worked for technology companies. I got into working for analyst firms, and then I started my own 15 years ago. So what’s crazy about all this is my background in education is industrial distribution. That’s that’s my background. And I stay heavily involved with Texas A and M University and serve on the engineering advisory board there. And so we’re constantly, you know, talking about the curriculum and what’s happening. And they are so excited about IoT, they’re so excited about artificial intelligence and so many other technologies. And so these things are coming together. And so it was a natural evolution with my background on the education side, and then my analyst world of I started off doing a lot of stuff in mobile well, it evolved, and I even did some graduate work in RFID. So my love for the technology and as well as my background on the supply chain side the logistics side, has kind of prepared me to kind of bring those two worlds together. And so I’m excited about it, because for a long time I wasn’t able to kind of utilize my expertise on the supply chain side, the logistics side, the industry 4.0 side, or back then, it wasn’t called that, but now these things are all coming together. So I’m able to kind of leverage the expertise from both sides and all of the research that we do, and so it’s the best of both worlds.

Premsai Sainathan  29:26

So what do you do when you’re not tracking the space? What’s your calling?

Stephanie Atkinson  29:33

Well, you know what? 2020 has been a very busy year for myself, personally, I took advantage of this, I said, You know what? One of the things I did this year is I started a marketing organization called VMark, and it’s geared, geared to help small and mid sized businesses with branding, marketing web. And we found that there was a gap. You know, so many companies were forced to be completely online. Well, what do you do if you have an website, you haven’t changed in 10 years. What do you do if you’re not really digital? You’re not really adopting the mobile apps and the tools that you need to run your business and your operations? So that’s something I did about four or five months ago. I started that company on top of outside of the IoT stuff, in addition, I recently started a nonprofit called elevate our kids, and we noticed that when this happened, that the digital the digital divide, is a problem across the United States and even globally, and we believe every child should have access. They should have broadband, and they should have a laptop device or a tablet so they can do their schooling. I know my kids are afforded all those luxuries. So the elevator kids was really brought about to kind of facilitate and help kids get brand new laptops in their hands in underserved and under resourced communities. So we are just getting started with that, working on our 501, c3 so I also do that in my spare time. And so we’ve been busy in 2020, and and there’s a lot of synergies between IoT and the need to market and develop lead generation and to pull resources to your business to really stand you know you want your brand to stand out. So we’re seeing some overlap between what we did at Compass and what we’re doing at V mark, and we will be leveraging all of our tech connections, and some of the people that are serving on our elevate our kids board are also technology executives, but we’ll be reaching out to a lot of big technology companies to get them involved in supporting the kids to get access to laptops as well.

Premsai Sainathan  31:42

Wow, that’s amazing. So that’s us speaking with Stephanie Atkinson from Compass intelligence, one of the 50 most influential women in internet of things, but not only that, but also a wonderful human being who is doing a lot of work for the community. Thank you. Stephanie pleasure, having you on the show.

Stephanie Atkinson  32:04

Thank you very much. Appreciate your time, and it was a great, great discussion. Thank you, Prem.

Scott Mears  32:10

Hi, my name is Scott Mears, and I’m one of the hosts of the Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. On this podcast we talk to supply chain heroes from around the world about everything, ranging from the disruptions related to supply chains, their personal experiences with tracking technologies, strategies to build resilience, and much, much more. We already have some recommended videos for you to the side of me, and if any of this sounds interesting to you, do subscribe to our Youtube channel and hit the bell icon so you don’t miss another Roambee video. I’ll see you next time.