Adrian Lawson, Waizu CEO, reveals the insights that come with seeing outside the box.
Adrian, what made you start Waizu?
While I was the CEO for a tech company in Bristol, I saw first-hand the challenges of managing lots of mobile devices – tablets, smart phones, rugged PDA’s – and decided to find a solution to theses problems.
Waizu is aimed at the operations team who are looking for a way to manage and monitor devices. You often find these teams have a lack of tools to help here meaning they lose devices, keep buying more than they need and don’t get the visibility when these devices cause operational issues.
Our platform makes it easy for them to see everything on one screen via a customisable dashboard and alerts.
“Our new managed mobility platform is an innovative solution unlike anything we’ve seen before. We save time, reduce lost devices and improve uptime. It’s definitely making an impact on our ability to manage our estate of rugged mobile devices.”
IT Manager, Kitwave Wholesale group.
What challenges does your solution solve?
The platform brings everything into one place, via a single portal.
The Operations team can access all the mobile devices across their local, regional or global estate on one screen.
A key difference with our platform, is the ease at which it can all come together. Our agent is installed on the device, usually via an MDM software, and then all charts, alerts and reporting is automatically populated. No lengthy set up or training.
The dashboard shows AI-enabled device analytics, giving operations access to real-time data and a clear view of all devices connecting back to their network. Intuitive alerts provide immediate visibility of faults and outages.
Trends, such as peak utilisation periods, apps being accessed, and device health give more granular data to help businesses join the dots to get ahead and stay there.
At a human level, these holistic insights can help businesses to understand patterns of use and spot trends.
The software also taps into sensors in the device and picks up if it’s falling or failing. The data feeds back to the software, into the cloud and displays on the dashboard in a matter of moments.
This information helps businesses to optimise utilisation of their high value mobile devices and provides the evidence to support their decisions on what to buy, how many to buy and how users interact with their devices.
It’s all about providing a wider story to help businesses see patterns and predictions that could create productivity and uptime issues.
Could you share an example?
Recently I met with a well-known DIY retailer to talk with their Head of Group Services. We discussed their biggest challenge: the number of devices that go missing across the business.
At least 50 are lost every month; dropped down the back of pallets, crushed by forklifts, missing from the rack… The truth is these are best guesses, he doesn’t actually know how they disappear, just that they do.
By the time the monthly report arrives, the devices are long gone, making it impossible to hunt them down or keep an accurate picture of the numbers in use.
Even without the challenges of staying on top of losses, trying to keep track of hundreds of devices, with varying warranty and service agreements, is a logistical headache.
Devices are continually moving between being repaired or replaced, at a cost of thousands of pounds every year.
How does your platform enhance productivity?
Productivity for the operations team is always top of mind, so we’ve built in several ways to help maximise device uptime.
Just 5 to 10 minutes of device down time each day can cost companies tens of thousands of pounds in lost productivity.
To reduce this our platform is monitoring areas such as battery performance to ensure it not only lasts a full shift, but also that the device starts the day fully charged. Device disruptions such as reboots, memory capacity and damage are all monitored and teams alerted when they need to take action.
The software also streamlines the warranty and service process, replacing manual return forms and complex manufacture portals with automated tickets, significantly reducing the time it takes to send back a device for repair.
An additional benefit is that the platform improves business accountability. Patterns across teams, sites and regions all help to take responsible for the care of these mission critical device.
Who will benefit from your solution?
Supply Chain businesses depend heavily on mobile technology to perform a range of work flows and are the most likely to see the quickest and biggest returns.
These companies invest heavily on mobile devices from the likes of Zebra Technologies and Honeywell. Our solution means they can buy less as there are better controls in place.
It also means for the operations team they can maximise their team’s productivity.
Businesses using our solution vary in terms of size and geography, but they all have one thing in common – the need to get ahead of these problems and fast.
Traditionally, only the IT team had access to device systems such as Mobile Device Management (MDM) – now our platform gives operations and service delivery meaningful insights so they can spend less time worrying about devices working.
What’s your vision for the future?
I’m excited about our achievements so far and the opportunity we have to keep innovating. Our customers are always facing new and varying challenges and we remain focussed on continuing to develop the platform to address those needs.
We’re still a nimble business and growing fast, and we’re already expanding into mainland Europe and North America.
Our values keep us agile and responsive to our customers, but we also want to remain human by having fun, not being afraid to try new things and building a great team.
It’s exciting to love what you do, to help businesses think differently about how they manage high value mobile devices and to be outcome oriented.
Download the Waizu eBook "The 7 Costly Sins of Shared Mobile Devices"
