Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Alex Bratton, CEO of Lextech (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To achieve that kind of efficiency and intelligence in the app, did you have to build a configurator in the back end?

Alex Bratton: We did not. We had to identify all different types of data – equipment types, facility types, etc. to try to nail down the master data source. Did we have to build an additional configuration engine for it? Not necessarily.

SM: Let’s do another case study.

AB: Another example is an organization – I can’t share its name – that had a challenge when it came to pricing their products. Their products were commodities. One of the problems they had was when their salespeople were in the field – they had hundreds of  salespeople – they didn’t have current pricing information on those commodities, and they were signing deals that could be 30, 60, or even 90 days into the future and they had no knowledge of what would happen. The problem they were facing is that they were losing $1 million a week because of underpriced sales orders. The salespeople had no guidance.

We put together a pricing guidance application that was able to access future forecasting, grab information, and provide guardrails. Essentially, for each item on an order there was a quote building tool and the person saw a red/green indicator. If it was red, the margin wasn’t high enough. If it was green, they were in the right range and they could continue forward. The application gave them the flexibility to move things around if they needed to, but at the same time it ensured the orders were in the right level or margin.

SM: Basically this application helps salespeople to figure out quotes and what level of discounting is admissible within the range of the margin, and it enables them to do meaningful quotes as well as be able to forecast the inventory into the operations.

AB: Absolutely. The complexity wasn’t just calculating the pricing for a customer based on a discount level, it was reaching out into “What is my cost for that?” and making sure that the margin is proper. “When that material comes in in 60 days and I need to ship it to somebody, what is the pricing of that?” We are thinking a few steps further than discounting, but you are right in terms of the intelligence of the application.

SM: Let’s do one more case study.

AB: One of the things we were able to do is help an organization enable a grain silo. At first it doesn’t make any sense. The problem here is the following: One of the trucks pulls up next to the grain silo and the driver has to get out, spin around and hangs in front of the trailer [from] the truck. Somebody else has to pull a chain that turns on motors and other things, and then corn starts flowing into that truck from above. That corn slowly fills up the front of the truck, and what it does is it kicks all that stuff into the driver’s face and he is inhaling it. It is a huge health hazard. Once it fills the front side of the truck he spins around, pulls the truck forward three feet, gets out and does it all over again. They have a lot of problems with drivers falling off the truck. So it is a health and a safety issue. Besides, it is not efficient as a process. We worked with a group that created some of the hardware linked to this and they asked us, “What would happen if we put an iPhone in the drivers’ hands, and we gave them visual access of what was going on around them and in one button they could turn the whole thing on?”

That is exactly what we did. The new system allows the driver to pull up next to the grain silo, fire up the iPhone, connect to the local equipment, see a video of their truck from above and press one button, which turns on all of the industrial equipment, and the corn starts flowing into the truck. Now he is able to slowly pull the truck forward, press one button when he is done, and drive off. From a results perspective, it keeps the drivers safe: they are not breathing in the corn, they are not falling off the truck. The organization got 10% to 20% more trucks through the process with half the labor.

One of the things I like about this example is that it has nothing to do with those numbers. It is the fact that there was no laptop, no website, no technology of any kind in that workflow before we added mobility. When we talk about the future and opportunities, it is in the no-tech – in the no-technology workflows where there is no technology involved. That is where mobility is going to change the world. Those are the ones I love seeing.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Alex Bratton, CEO of Lextech
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