SmartSense LIVE: Creating a Community to Propel Each Other Forward

We successfully held #SmartSenseLIVE — the initial meeting of our advisory boards and our first user conference — October 16-18 in Boston. It was a fantastic time of knowledge sharing and value building. Our customers gave us valuable feedback and we learned together while drawing on the expertise of our Advisory Boards. We are thankful for our customers' enthusiasm and willingness to engage in the evolution of SmartSense as we work to push the future of the IoT industry forward.

A Place for Community

For me, LIVE is a place for creating a community. It's creating a community through online and in-person connection where our customers share industry experience. It's not for discussions about features or functions. It's not about how to navigate the system, it’s not a user guide. No click here to do that. That's not what LIVE is. LIVE is a customer community that fosters different types of conversations about implementation, adoption, and obstacles in the business arena—not just the software arena. Conversations like these:

·      “Did you see the regulation in Oregon that just came out about a month ago? How did you overcome that?”

·      “We had an alert from ABC pharmaceutical company sending us a recall. How did you handle that? How did you identify all the inventory without any risk?”

·      “My adoption is 87% and I see your adoption is 97%. How did you get there? Tell me about your workflow.”

·      “What other sensors are you integrating? What other software are you integrating with SmartSense now that it's an open platform?”

The purpose of LIVE is to elevate the value that our customers are creating with our platform and create more value for them by connecting the network of customers to one another. That's the purpose.

Another function of events like this is to elevate our customers’ individual career paths. Opportunities like LIVE equip customers with knowledge that they share with other departments in addition to their own, creating an avenue for promotion. In many of the user conferences that I’ve put on for the other technology companies I’ve run, I had people come back to thank us for all the support and tell me that they had been promoted. Those are the epic moments for me.

Learnings from Customers

A.P. Acosta from Darden International talked about the fact that they were looking for a company that will take the journey with them — providing not just what they need today but being a partner that wants to learn about what their customers need going forward into the future. He spoke about how SmartSense has been willing to learn and evolve over the years, building confidence in a shared vision.

Christy Letourneau from CVS Health spoke about her increasing responsibilities. It's great to hear about our sponsor excelling within her organization. Hsing-Yi Hsieh from Festival Food spoke about the fact that she could impact people's lives by improving food safety operations and employee satisfaction by automating temperature checking and improving workflows. From Children's Hospital, we heard about how SmartSense impacts their NICU operations, helping them ensure that they protect high-risk newborns. We heard from Tom Mcmahan of Meijer about how he built security layers above the sensors that come with the assets, and he shared why SmartSense is giving him the peace of mind he needs 24 hours a day.

The stories that customers share at events like LIVE help inspire our teams at SmartSense and keep us focused on their desired outcomes and the real-world results that have critical impact for the consumers and patients they serve.

Role of the Boards of Advisors

The purpose of the Board of Advisors is to infuse the organization with more vision for where the industry is going. The verticals we serve have distinct needs, so we formed two Boards of Advisors—one to serve healthcare and the other to cast vision for food service. Our boards are helping steer our platform in a direction that answers big picture questions and aligns our product development with where businesses are headed. The Boards are helping us answer questions like:

·      What problems are CIOs looking to solve?

·      What is critical for the Chief Operating Officer of a hospital?

·      What are the goals of a Chief Compliance Officer at a grocery chain?

·      What will the regulatory environment for retail pharmacy look like in the near, mid, and long term?

·      How will technology partners make meeting the nutritional needs of K-12 children easier for School Nutrition Directors?

When the Board of Advisors presented at LIVE, it was very clear that they were interested in two things:

1.    What does the future of the Internet of Things look like?

2.    What does SmartSense need to do in order to conquer that market and move it forward?

Members of the Boards also emphasized the integral role of customer success in serving the needs of the market. We have made great improvements in this area, but we need to do even more to align what we deliver with our customers’ desired outcomes. At SmartSense, we are trying to make things easy for our customers—easy decisions, easy implementation, easy to work with, easy to use, easy to renew, easy to integrate with other sensors and software workflows. The easy button. Everywhere.

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SmartSense LIVE 2022 was the first user conference of many for our organization. Inspired by the voices of our customers who wanted a community where they could talk with each other, we put the event together to great success. I deeply enjoyed seeing the networking and discussions that took place between our SmartSense teams, our customers, and members of the Boards of Advisors. I can’t wait to get together again next year and see the value that we produce for each other! See you all online at Customer Connect on December 7th! Here is the link to register.