BK: Welcome back to HxGN RADIO. I’m Brian, thanks for joining us. Engineering departments and vendors of engineering software recognise that operators need help in the field to execute their tasks safely and on time. These incumbents base their solutions on technical information readiness and expensive CAD simulation. Voovio offers a completely different approach to solve this problem, and the market is very excited about it. Joining me today is Jaime Aguilera, the CEO at Voovio, and Christian McDermott, country manager in the USA. Today’s episode, we’ll be discussing boosting the productivity in the plant. Thanks for joining us, appreciate it.
CM: Thank you.
JA: Hello.
BK: It’s good to have you know multiple people here, I enjoy that. Well I’m gonna let you two ask the questions, I’m just gonna sit back … were gonna have some fun. Well, let’s start about this, tell me a little bit about Voovio and what it’s about in a nutshell, let’s go with that.
JA: Okay, so Voovio, that’s two things basically – one is immediately a boost of productivity of operations and plants, and also immediately making the lives of operators much easier. You know for the past 10 years, many software developments have been made related to acid productivity. In the sense of making, increasing their availability and reliability of facets via predictive maintenance, and some other developments related to industry for IAOT, but none of these efforts have been made or put into software for people’s productivity. And this is basically what Voovio is about. I mean we have developed a set of tools and solutions that increases the availability and reliability of field operators, basically boosting dramatically the productivity and making their tasks much easier and safer to execute.
Now some of our customers are reporting productivity increases of 100% in onboarding. And 60 to 80% productivity increase in procedure execution. Meaning start up or shut downs of units or normal procedures. And at the same time making their work environment much safer. There is a key thing here, which is all these benefits are experienced by our customers immediately, not in the long term. So the ROI measured by them is really, really high.
BK: Good, that’s excellent to hear. So you’re talking about more being people-centric versus asset-centric?
JA: I mean, well, you could say that we’re asset-centric in the sense that we visually replicate plants and the logics of the processes and procedures in those plants. But we focus on the tasks that people execute in the field. So I would say that we are a more procedure-centric solution rather than asset-centric. At the end of the day, I mean, these, the process plants are … thousands of procedures are taking place, basically at the same time, but in the right sequence. Some of these tasks or procedures or processes are autotomised in the sense that they can be executed from the control room, but a high number of them are executed by people in the field. And these are the ones, precisely the ones, that we make more productive. And more safe and easier to execute to the people in the field.
BK: Very nice. All right so there’s a ton of stuff out there right. What sets you apart?
CM: So I think the thing that sets us apart is that as Jaime said, we focus on the people who effectively manage the plants. So that’s the operators and their managers. So typical purchases are operations and not engineering departments.
BK: All right so what other features would you want to highlight as well with that?
CM: So there’s two, two features. The first one is that Voovio is incredibly easy to implement. We do all the work, basically; our customers, operators, you know they have scarce resources, so we don’t expect them to do very much work. Software solutions in general tend to be, you know, they can be not very user friendly, and there’s a lot of issues associated with implementation. With Voovio, actually our customers experience the opposite.
The second thing is that I wanted to talk about our pilot programme. So customers are able to try Voovio out for free and measure the value that it gives them before they commit to buying it. And this we do, we can set up in two to three months and they can start measuring it with their operators. Others, you know, software solutions in general seem to be more systemic, meaning that you kind of have to test the whole software solution to see the value, whereas as Voovio, you can kind of localise it, test it and then implement it without very much disruption to operations. I think those are the two driving factors.
BK: Good. Well, that makes a lot of sense you know to be able to say “Okay, well, we want to test this area specifically to find out if that’s going to be, you know, worth the cost of it,” which is great.
CM: Absolutely.
BK: Excellent. And I like the idea of having that free test option. Make sure that it’s working and then, okay, now you got it, that works. So has that worked for you, has that model worked for you well?
JA: It’s working pretty well, actually. I mean, were making a real splash in the market. Really a big splash.
BK: And you have been successful obviously with very larger companies out there – you know how is that going?
JA: Well, it’s going pretty well, I mean … actually … our customers at the end of the day, the thing is that they’re seeing the value that we offer, that we are improving the productivity and at the same time reducing the risks in their operations. And at the end of the day, this is what people are looking for, being competitive and at the same time, safe. That’s clear. We also seeour technology works, and this is what our customers appreciate. I mean we go there, we present to them, we show them and then we come in, implement a works from day one, no BS, I mean its right away.
Also, what really has surprised us is that our best promoters are our users. I mean, it was really amazing to see suddenly plants calling out of nowhere asking us, “Hey we’ve heard about you, what are you guys doing?” And this is because our users are the ones who are basically telling their colleagues or other plants that they are using Voovio, that they are finding it really useful and they’re really, really happy with it so. And also, what Christian mentioned, I mean this pilot offering. What we have said, being able to test something without any commitment; I mean obviously you need to put some commitment in the sense that you need to devote some resources a couple days. But if you’re into it, you can try it out right away and six weeks, you can really get it tested.
BK: That’s excellent, and to be able to hear, too, you know, that your users are promoting for you, I mean, that speaks volumes and that’s feedback right there, just to know how you’re doing. If they’re out there telling others that you need to use Voovio, wow, fantastic. Great. Anything else you want to share? Any final words?
CM: Just thank you for having us.
BK: Well, congratulations on the success and thank you both for being here, it’s been a pleasure. And, of course, you can learn more about Voovio over at Voovio.com. Jaime, Christian, thank you.
JA: Thank you very much.
CM: Thank you very much, thanks.
BK: Be sure to tune into more episodes on HxGNRADIO.com or iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher Radio, check us out there. Thanks so much for listening.
