BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH€¦ · Application Convergence Impact and Customer Impact Completeness of...
Transcript of BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH€¦ · Application Convergence Impact and Customer Impact Completeness of...
BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
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BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
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Contents
Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3
Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3
Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3
Application Convergence Impact and Customer Impact ............................................. 3
Best Practice Visual .............................................................................................. 6
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 6
Understanding Customer Value Excellence through Application Convergence ..................... 7
Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 8
Best Practice Award Analysis for APX Labs ..................................................................... 8
Decision Support Scorecard ................................................................................... 8
Application Convergence Impact ............................................................................ 9
Customer Impact ................................................................................................. 9
Decision Support Matrix ...................................................................................... 10
Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 11
About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 13
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Background and Company Performance
Industry Challenges
Automation in the manufacturing industry is critical to enhancing processes, bringing
efficiency to the plant and making data actionable. Providing the data generated to
workers on the plant floor and helping them manage the process through actionable
insights in real-time, however, can be a daunting challenge. Linking the front-end and
back-end manufacturing processes and systems to provide holistic data to workers
presents yet another lofty challenge. The activities running at the back of the plant are
often disconnected from the enterprise, thus creating a time lag between the two
introducing delays, inefficiencies and potential quality problems. Because of this, the
unmet need for information on the plant floor is a significant and chronic problem facing
the industrial enterprise today. Too frequently, workers receive and physically deliver
information on paper, or they have to find a way to relay the information through other
communication channels, which are most often unreliable and cumbersome, not to
mention that these antiquated communications channels cause delays that can result in
lost production time and errors.
With revenues under pressure, product complexity increasing, and processes 'going lean',
the quality of output is becoming increasingly important. Manufacturing industries face the
challenge of reducing errors in process and output, while keeping costs low and operations
flexible. Plus, worker health and safety on the plant floor are also paramount, making
undistracted and hands-free work another important challenge.
Application Convergence Impact and Customer Impact
Completeness of Vision
The manufacturing industry is rapidly moving towards digitalization as it continues to
adopt automation and communication solutions. Automation is enabling the vision of a
digital enterprise. APX Labs applies the convergence of software and hardware
(wearables) industries for manufacturing, field service and other industrial processes. This
bridges the gap between the users on the plant floor, the machines they work with and
the rest of the data and systems of the enterprise.
APX’s wearable software solution, Skylight, is a hardware-agnostic platform that connects
multiple wearable devices with other machines and personnel. It ties into existing
networked systems and brings information to users, thereby helping them create
actionable data-based insight in real-time right at the point where they are doing their
job.
One of the strengths of Skylight is that it is not middleware or developer tools, but is
rather a configurable and extensible end-user application and real-time enterprise system.
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Skylight’s applications cut across industries; from oil and gas to power, from aerospace
and defense to automotive and transportation. While Skylight helps a company provide
real-time information to its workers on the plant floor, it also ensures personnel safety
and process efficiency optimization. The solution is compatible with all major wearable
hardware devices such as smart glasses and smart watches. It can be seamlessly
integrated into existing processes and external systems to create customized processes.
Moreover, Skylight is designed to help companies address issues across a wide spectrum
of areas where personnel are building, fixing, assembling, or monitoring, and require data
feed to enable smooth processes.
Unlike competing 'process-based' point solutions, APX Labs' Skylight is an enterprise-wide
solution that can be used for any industrial process by any employee. It also allows the
enterprise to customize and build their own plug-in applications for specific solutions and
to alter existing processes. Skylight can serve as a ‘browser’ for the Internet of Things,
connecting the users of wearable devices into the digital ecosystem of connected
machines, sensors and applications. With increasing data dependence, data vulnerability
increases. Skylight's solution is highly secure, mitigating such IT risks.
Growth Potential
Skylight is a platform that supports multiple scenarios ranging from factory assembly to
material handling on the manufacturing floor. It enables personnel on the plant floor to
get up-to-date work orders, instructions, and checklists while on the go. Integrating the
software into the company’s existing knowledge base helps workers pull on-demand
reference sheets, training guides, help videos, and maps, delivering this knowledge to
where it is needed the most.
As industries increasingly adopt automated processes, wearable solutions will be applied
to connect personnel with machines. Skylight has the capability to become the industry
pioneer and the de-facto standard. It has been applied by top companies in the
manufacturing industry for not only machine to personnel communication, but also
personnel to personnel communication. With wearable devices becoming a natural fit with
manufacturing, service, distribution and related sectors, the potential for Skylight’s growth
is immense.
Disruptive Capability of the Application
Skylight addresses the current challenge of connecting personnel, thus enabling for the
first time comprehensive enterprise connectivity. Skylight enables two-way live audio and
video communication that can help the workers on the floor address critical issues with
back-end support. Live communication can enable experts located anywhere in the
enterprise to immediately help personnel on the factory floor. Instant alerts through text
messages and notifications provide a constant feed of information to the personnel
wearing smart glasses and smart watches. Skylight also provides a comprehensive
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platform for staff to view data from various devices, sensors, and systems in multiple
interfaces for instantaneous insight, while controlling the devices around them.
Business Value to Customers
The manufacturing industry is moving towards connectivity of all assets to create
processes and provide value for money to its customers. Skylight enables users with
wearable devices to interact with applications, machines and other personnel, thereby
helping companies extend the connectivity through the enterprise. It enables back-end
processes to deliver information as required while keeping employees 'hands free'. The
display, camera, sensors, and other user input devices help workers on the plant floor
communicate with support teams. As the software platform is hardware agnostic,
companies can use a variety of different devices on a single software platform. The
enterprise-wide and industry-wide scalability to provide real-time information on the plant
floor delivers business value that is unmatched by traditional systems. The latest release,
Skylight R5 has key features such as work order management, integration with smart
watches, voice activation and online/offline interactivity with systems. Shop-floor
personnel can also build on current processes/activities with other systems such as SAP,
Microsoft, Salesforce and others to access asset and product data, service tickets and
other important information. The ability of the platform to bring realistic and connected
user experiences through a wearable system, hands free, is truly differentiated in the
market. One of the deep integrations APX Labs has built is with SAP systems (Work
Manager, Visual Enterprise, HANA and MII). The platform’s ability to seamlessly interact
with enterprise systems and perform data transactions and help enterprise collaboration
are universal solutions. The potential for Skylight as a platform of the future is limitless,
as the company aims on building its ecosystem and driving new-age applications for old-
world problems.
Customer Ownership Experience
APX Labs offers training for customers and partners, reducing adoption time, ensuring an
unrivaled ownership experience. The ownership experience is enhanced by Skylight’s
multi-industry reach, with best-in-class companies having already embraced its solution.
Leading companies in process and discrete manufacturing industries have adopted
Skylight as the application platform to build out applications for the industrial ecosystem.
At a juncture, where companies are pursuing platform-based strategies, Skylight’s vision
to build the industrial wearable ecosystem of the future speaks volumes of the company’s
foresight and ability to capitalize on futuristic opportunities. Skylight counts aerospace,
utility, automotive, oil and gas, telecom and energy companies as key customers. These
customers use Skylight for a variety of issues such as compliance management, best-
practices sharing, error reduction, traceability, productivity improvements and such
others. Furthermore, the platform’s scalability and extensibility is very rewarding to
customers as they expand on applications and roll it as an enterprise-wide standard.
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Customer Service Experience
APX Labs understands the technicalities behind the adoption and integration of Skylight
into existing analog plant floor systems. It has, therefore, created a unique service
portfolio to help seamlessly incorporate the solution into a company’s existing network,
thus eliminating the risk of disjointed integration. The solution is designed to meet a
company’s specific needs across the enterprise. It also comes with a developer toolkit that
can further satisfy unmet demands. With the control in the user’s hands, Skylight provides
complete service experience to its customers.
Best Practice Visual
Conclusion
APX Labs has brought convergence to the manufacturing industry with its hardware-
agnostic software platform through Skylight, a product that enables personnel to build,
monitor, and operate processes hands-free. The platform has disrupted traditional
analogous plant floor communication and digitized it with wearable technology, thus
connecting machines to personnel in real-time. Skylight has also helped companies
generate efficiency and value for money. It can be extended to create customized
solutions with the help of the developer toolkit, thus giving complete autonomy over an
enterprise’s wearable strategy. Because of its strong overall performance, best-in-class
solution, pioneering technology and cutting-edge applications, APX Labs is recognized with
Frost & Sullivan’s 2015 Customer Value Excellence through Application Convergence
Award.
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Significance of Customer Value Excellence through
Application Convergence
Application convergence drives a spectrum of opportunities for value-enhancement as new
applications and ecosystems get created. Further, application convergence leads to
extension of customer value and unique points of differentiation. At its core, application
convergence or any other type of convergence can only be sustained with leadership in
three key areas: customer demand, business value, and competitive positioning.
Understanding Customer Value Excellence through
Application Convergence
Application convergence leads to opportunities for new value creation in here to
undiscovered ways, resulting in new applications which outperform existing approaches
and drives superior performance by utilizing multiple system inputs.
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Key Benchmarking Criteria
For the Application Convergence Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated
two key factors— Application Convergence Impact and Customer Impact—according to the
criteria identified below.
Application Convergence Impact
Criterion 1: Completeness of vision
Criterion 2: Growth potential
Criterion 3: Ability to drive application ecosystem interest
Criterion 4: Disruptive capability of the application
Criterion 5: Impact of applications over legacy approaches
Customer Impact
Criterion 1: Business value to customers
Criterion 2: Customer's perception of value
Criterion 3: Customer ownership experience
Criterion 4: Customer service experience
Criterion 5: Brand Equity
Best Practice Award Analysis for APX Labs
Decision Support Scorecard
To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance
categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Scorecard. This tool
allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze performance, according to
the key benchmarking criteria listed in the previous section, and to assign ratings on that
basis. The tool follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation;
ratings guidelines are illustrated below.
RATINGS GUIDELINES
The Decision Support Scorecard is organized by application convergence attributes and
customer impact (i.e., the overarching categories for all 10 benchmarking criteria; the
definitions for each criteria are provided beneath the scorecard). The research team
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confirms the veracity of this weighted scorecard through sensitivity analysis, which
confirms that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a
significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies.
The results of this analysis are shown below. To remain unbiased and to protect the
interests of all organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players
as Competitor 2 and Competitor 3.
Measurement of 1–10 (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)
Customer Value Excellence through
Application Convergence
Application
Convergence
Impact
Customer
Impact Average Rating
APX Labs 9.0 9.0 9.0
Competitor 2 7.0 7.0 7.0
Competitor 3 6.0 5.0 5.5
Application Convergence Impact
Criterion 1: Completeness of Vision
Requirement: Ability to showcase a long-term vision and pioneer industry transformation.
Criterion 2: Growth Potential
Requirement: Ability to leverage the benefits of converging technologies and drive growth.
Criterion 3: Ability to Drive Application Ecosystem Interest
Success of application convergence depends on the ecosystem maturity, its partners and
strategy to build-out industry-specific solution
Criterion 4: Disruptive capability of the application
Requirement: The new application’s capability to replace existing market incumbents and
provide a path to long-term sustenance.
Criterion 5: Impact of applications over legacy approaches
Requirement: Capability of applications to deliver a set of superior solutions is key to win
support from customers.
Customer Impact
Criterion 1: Business Value to Customers
Requirement: Capability to deliver superior business value instead of simple substitution.
Criterion 2: Customer's Perception of Value
Requirement: Customer view-points on blurring of application and its potential to create
new revenue streams.
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Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience
Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a
positive experience throughout the life of the product or service
Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience
Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality
Criterion 5: Brand Equity
Requirement: New application enhances the company’s brand, creating and/or nurturing
brand loyalty
Decision Support Matrix
Once all companies have been evaluated according to the Decision Support Scorecard,
analysts can then position the candidates on the matrix shown below, enabling them to
visualize which companies are truly breakthrough and which ones are not yet operating at
best-in-class levels.
High
Low
Low High
Cu
sto
mer I
mp
act
Application Convergence Impact
APX Labs
Competitor 2
Competitor 3
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The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best
Practices Awards
Research Methodology
Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research
methodology represents the analytical
rigor of our research process. It offers a
360-degree-view of industry challenges,
trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of
Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.
Too often, companies make important
growth decisions based on a narrow
understanding of their environment,
leading to errors of both omission and
commission. Successful growth strategies
are founded on a thorough understanding
of market, technical, economic, financial,
customer, best practices, and demographic
analyses. The integration of these research
disciplines into the 360-degree research
methodology provides an evaluation
platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-
in-class levels.
360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN
THE CHAOS
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Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices
Frost & Sullivan Awards follow a 10-step process to evaluate award candidates and assess
their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the Awards are
based on close adherence to this process.
STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT
1 Monitor, target, and screen
Identify award recipient candidates from around the globe
Conduct in-depth industry research
Identify emerging sectors Scan multiple geographies
Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria
2 Perform 360-degree research
Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline
Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners
Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria
Rank all candidates
Matrix positioning all candidates’ performance relative to one another
3
Invite thought leadership in best practices
Perform in-depth examination of all candidates
Confirm best-practice criteria Examine eligibility of all
candidates Identify any information gaps
Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates
4
Initiate research director review
Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles
Brainstorm ranking options Invite multiple perspectives
on candidates’ performance Update candidate profiles
Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper
5
Assemble panel of industry experts
Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders
Share findings Strengthen cases for
candidate eligibility Prioritize candidates
Refined list of prioritized award candidates
6
Conduct global industry review
Build consensus on award candidates’ eligibility
Hold global team meeting to review all candidates
Pressure-test fit with criteria Confirm inclusion of all
eligible candidates
Final list of eligible award candidates, representing success stories worldwide
7 Perform quality check
Develop official award consideration materials
Perform final performance benchmarking activities
Write nominations Perform quality review
High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes
8
Reconnect with panel of industry experts
Finalize the selection of the best-practice award recipient
Review analysis with panel Build consensus Select winner
Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria
9 Communicate recognition
Inform award recipient of award recognition
Present award to the CEO Inspire the organization for
continued success Celebrate the recipient’s
performance
Announcement of award and plan for how recipient can use the award to enhance the brand
10 Take strategic action
Upon licensing, company may share award news with stakeholders and customers
Coordinate media outreach Design a marketing plan Assess award’s role in future
strategic planning
Widespread awareness of recipient’s award status among investors, media personnel, and employees
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About Frost & Sullivan
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