Harmony Case Study

Business Challenge

Harmony Enterprises, a third generation family-owned business, is the world leader in the design and manufacturing of waste handling and recycling equipment. Airports, retail stores, restaurants and manufacturing plants worldwide use their compactors and balers. As the innovative market leader, Harmony Enterprises is leading the industry transformation to wireless equipment monitoring.

In 2017, customer demand for their remotely monitored SmartPack compactor was huge, but they could not ship a quality solution. Large customers were not renewing service contracts. After spending 5 years and considerable dollars in development, the wireless monitoring solution was unreliable. The web application did not meet customer expectations. The support the company was receiving from their web application vendor was spotty at best and always came with a big price tag. Harmony Enterprises needed to correct the situation quickly to protect its stellar quality reputation.

The strategic challenge was equally difficult. Customers wanted other Harmony Enterprises equipment to be Internet-connected. Their web application vendor charged high software development fees for each addition. With over 40 products in their portfolio, spending many months and significant dollars with their web application provider to launch each new smart product was not feasible. Management needed a long-term reliable solution that worked across their products. The product roadmap, driven by the market realities, demanded a different approach.

Solution

Lane Powell, recently hired Business Development Manager tasked with this challenge, discovered New Boundary Technologies and its RemoteAware™ “Internet of Things “ (IoT) application service.

RemoteAware is a configurable, full-featured IoT application service. It makes equipment smart with no software coding required. RemoteAware is end-to-end secure and field proven with some of the largest companies in the world. The application service was Harmony Enterprises-branded and configured on day one. RemoteAware exceeded Harmony Enterprises’ customer requirements “out of the box”. The RemoteAware application service supported the existing customer hardware in the field.

New Boundary Technologies’ extensive loT knowledge and technology expertise through its 30+ year rich history made for the perfect partner. The highly skilled technical team focused on quickly ensuring a quality, holistic customer solution. Thorough system testing by the New Boundary Technologies team revealed hardware and system design improvements that further enhanced the reliable customer experience.

The Harmony Enterprises wireless monitoring application provides customers a web view of their equipment. Text and e-mail messages notify staff when they need to empty the compactors. The solution also improves equipment uptime through preventive maintenance knowledge made possible by remotely tracking parameters such as unit cycle count, motor run time, and fluid levels. Customers maximize operational efficiency by knowing when a compactor is getting full or needs service.

Results

Harmony Enterprises now delivers a high quality equipment monitoring service. RemoteAware resurrected previously unreliable installations. Customers today realize exceptional operational returns using the smart compactors. Customers are expanding their service orders, in some cases doubling their deployments. Key customers who were cancelling orders now plan to purchase the service.

The wealth of real-time equipment information has uncovered a new revenue opportunity for Harmony Enterprises to offer a proactive repair service. They can promptly alert their customers when equipment needs maintenance. The RemoteAware integration also reduced cell data charges by $700/month.

The biggest wins Harmony Enterprises sees are the fast time to market and superior customer support. According to Lane Powell, “We can bring new custom products to market on the RemoteAware application in under a half hour. New Boundary Technologies provides very responsive technical support with the personal touch to ensure we have happy customers. They have far exceeded our expectations.”

Partnering with New Boundary Technologies provided Harmony Enterprises the strategic catalyst needed to transform its product line. RemoteAware delivers immediate time to market for the monitoring application service without the tens of thousands of dollars of software development project cost. Schedules to launch new smart products are now accelerating.

Leveraging the experience of the New Boundary Technologies team and its loT partner ecosystem continues to make Harmony Enterprises more competitive. Future iterations of the company’s smart equipment solutions will be less expensive, incorporate leading-edge communications technology, and include enhanced features.

According to Lane Powell, Business Development Manager at Harmony Enterprises, “Harmony has found the ideal partner in New Boundary Technologies in the form of development, support and service. They have cut our costs while reducing our time to market by over 5X. With their help, we’ve transformed dissatisfied customers into customers who are thrilled with our performance and response.”

More information can be found at www.remoteaware.com.