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A lot of technology can improve the way we work in field service but none can change the way we operate so fundamentally as the introduction of smart glasses. That is the opinion of Kyle Semani, CEO of Pristine IO and in this series of articles we've talked exclusively to Semani at length on why he sees smart glasses revolutionising the field service industries.

In the first part of this series we looked at the why despite Google removing their Glass Xplorer program in field service at least the future of Glass and other competitor products is very much alive and well. In part two we Semani outlined some very significant savings that can be made through the correct application of smart glasses in field service. Now in the final feature of this series we look at some of the challenges faced by smart glasses and how they can be overcome... 

As anyone who managed to get their hands on a Beta edition of Glass will testify excitement soon turned to frustration as you realised that even with moderate use the battery life just wasn’t enough to last you more than a few hours, five or six if you were lucky. Surely this is an issue that must be rectified if Smart Glasses are to have a place in field service?

Well for Samani – it’s just not that big an issue. “Our system today gets two to three times the battery life that you’d get if you were using a consumer product straight out of the box.” He begins when probed on this issue, pretty much shooting down the criticism there and then.

 

“That’s mainly down to optimisations being made at the operating system level as well as our own app doing a number of different things to help out.” He clarifies. However, he doesn’t stop there.

He continues to point out that even without such optimisation fears around battery life really aren’t that valid anyway.

“In terms of practical use” he continues “well we aggregate our customer data and the average call length is between eight and twelve minutes, very few of our calls exceed that time-line and the reality is that nobody needs to watch video for that long.

They may call back twenty minutes later but it’s pretty rare that someone needs to call for fortyfive minutes straight. It’s just not very useful and that just doesn’t happen. So battery life isn’t by and large proven to be an issue.”

He has a point, a very good one at that.

Something that many of us are guilty of is trying to align wearable devices with existing mobile computing options such as tablets, smart phones and so on.

However, the simple fact is that the use case is very different. We need to think of what the smart glasses would, and would not, be used for. If we do this then the reality is that as Samani asserts battery life really needn’t become a significant issue.

“I don’t think that smart watches and smart glasses are that comparable. Yes there both wearables but the use cases for both are really far apart.”

Even in those rare outlier cases where a field engineer does need to stream video excessively Samani has a solution. “ In the off chance that you do need to exceed multiple hours of video streaming in any given day, on our platform you can charge the device whilst you where it.” He concludes “We supply our customers with a battery pack if they need it and with that they could go for 10 hours of consecutive video streaming.” He explains

 

Actually the biggest issue Samani and his team are challenged with is how complex such a device is to use. “The biggest push-back we get is ‘will my field service techs be able to use it effectively?’

For them it’s a legitimate concern, they haven’t used smart glasses in the wild.”He states.

“What I say in that conversation is we have definitively proven, with our customers, that this works and our platform is incredibly easy to use.”

In fairness he certainly isn’t exaggerating when he says it’s easy to use.

Describing the user experience Samani explains “Literally all you need to do is put on the glasses and say ‘OK Glass request support.’”

“After that everything else becomes automated. And the person wearing the glass can focus on the job at hand whether they are turning a wrench, opening a panel, soldering wires... it doesn’t really matter what that person is doing the system becomes completley automated and is incredibly easy to use.”

So with all of the potential gains and very assured responses to potential pitfalls it seems Samani really is the right man , in the right place at the right time and Pristine’s already healthy initial growth is surely set to continue. The only question remains when will we start to see further widespread adoption of smart glasses?

“I think in 2016 it’ll become a reasonably discussed topic, people will accept this is happening people are already doing it and it’ll really start to grow from there.” Samani says.

“You look at IoT in the field service world or workforce management, these are technologies widely discussed in the field service industry and it’s pretty commonly expected that if your not already doing it, you’re going to do it in the next few years. I think in 2016 that type of conversation will happen around smart glasses.”

It is interesting that for Samani, the conversation is focussed very much on Smart Glasses not the wider conversation around wearables. In fact he (quite rightly) sees a significant gap between the application of Smart Watches and Smart Glasses. “I don’t think that smart watches and smart glasses are that comparable. Yes here both wearables but the use cases for both are really far apart. For me watches are for consumers and glasses are for enterprise.” He asserts

 

“Our belief is that glasses will be the ones that really deliver the value for enterprise. Watches can’t really impact how your tech works too much, glasses could change the way we structure our workforce entirely.”

Again with such ambitious rhetoric accuations could be aimed at Samani of over egging the custard. However, whilst he certainly has a tangible excitement to his tone as mentioned above, it is also countered by a measured authroity. He truly believes that smart glasses will change the way we work and he is systematically building his case piece by piece.

“When the data becomes more robust and proven we will publicise it and expect a lot more people to follow suit.” He concludes “There will be definetly some variability in differing industries, who adopts first and why - the more expensive the problem the more likely a company will be to adopt our solution sooner, but we are witnessing a lot of interest and we expect to see a big change in how global field service teams, and even regional ones, deliver customer service in the not so distant future”

 

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In the first part of this series we looked at the why despite Google removing their Glass Xplorer program in field service at least the future of Glass and other competitor products is very much alive and well. Now in the second part of the series we continue our exclusive interview with Pristine IO CEO Kyle Semani as he outlines some very significant savings that can be made through the correct application of smart glasses in field service... 

Indeed when it comes to genuine cost savings the early statistics from Pristine make a very compelling case for adoption. Something Samani is clearly keen to get across in our conversation. His business is built on offering significant savings to their client base. “I think the ROI of implementing smart glasses actually delivers far more than a smart phone or tablets did when they first appeared.” He begins

“Our data is still young but looking at our primary customers these companies are going to save millions of dollars by using our technology.”

What is particularly compelling about the smart glass argument, and Pristine’s approach is that such savings are far more tangible than those discussed when we talk about other devices such as smart phones, laptops, tablets etc.

As Samani puts it “It’s not all theoretical efficiency gains, this is money going right back on the bottom line. This is cash.”

 

“Our general line in the sand we’ve drawn is if the cost of downtime is above $2,000/hour then we get really excited because we know we can deliver you an awful lot of value.” He surmises.

Perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse here though.

Of course such talk of tangible cost saving is attractive to any company, but what exactly does the Pristine product do and how can it be used to offer such significant rewards?

Samani describes the Pristine app as the only pure solution to stream live audio and video from Google Glass (or any other smart glasses) to any other device within the world in a secure capacity so it can be deployed in an enterprise setting.”

Basically the app in combination with a pair of smart glasses will provide a true “see what I see” experience which will in turn enable people to collaborate remotely, whilst the engineer (or even customer) on site are able to keep their hands completely free.

In Samani’s own words “Rather than actually sending a technician to a site now customers can put on the Glass and walk through what the problem is whilst being is remotely connected to a service centre.”

“If field service companies can centralise their workforce somewhat then their field workers can get a better quality of life and their customers are getting better customer support in every case.”

“The goal here is to save field service trips, so to save cost and also to help companies deliver a better customer experience.”

One immediate thought around such a proposition is that this could literally change the way field service operations are structured.

 

With such remote access tools becoming readily available, this could genuinely open the doors to many companies centralising their operation, bringing their most experienced engineers into a central hub, and outsourcing a large amount of work to less skilled (and therefore less expensive) local workers, or even getting the customer to take on the work themselves.

This is certainly something that Pristine are seeing within their growing customer base.

“We’re seeing our customers equip both their existing customers and their existing field engineers with the technology. The goal is to deliver a player to every single case.” Samani explains.

However, the benefits of such a move aren’t solely financial there is also the soft benefit of improving the work/life balance of existing engineers.

“If field service companies can centralise their workforce somewhat then their field workers can get a better quality of life and their customers are getting better customer support in every case.” Samani asserts

“They [the field engineers] used to fly around 50 weeks a year now they fly around 20 weeks a year - it’s a totally different lifestyle for these guys and they spend more time with their kids and their families.”

A noble, if exceptionally forward thinking sentiment of course.

However, there are certainly the seeds of not just change but revolution being sowed as smart glass manufacturers, empowered by companies such as Pristine turn their focus onto field service.

This is a good point to bring up the fact that whilst Google are the most prominent manufacturer of smart glasses they are certainly not alone.

In fact both Epson and Vuzix sit proudly on the Pristine website front page alongside Glass. Pristine already work with pretty much every manufacturer of Smart Glasses available – a market Samani believes will continue to expand.

“Just Like there are 100 different mobile phone makers there will be 100 different manufacturers of Smart-glasses.” He explains “We’re going to be rolling out lots of different hardware to our customers. Our customers are going to get cost benefits from there being more choice and competition and they are also going to be able to choose the device that is right for them and right for their needs”

Of course developing a product to sit across a number of devices has it’s own challenge and as our recent research outlined there is a preference amongst field service companies for native applications (i.e. applications that are developed specifically for the device it is to be used on rather than device agnostic apps).

 

Is this a potential issue for a developer working in a fledgling market that is, by it’s definition, going to be fragmented as a number of companies release their own products?

Well it would seem that here smart glasses have been able to take advantage of the evolutionary path of the smart phones that went before them.

In short for Samani and his team at Pristine the variety of devices doesn’t raise too many issues. Outlining their working process in greater detail Samani commented “Whilst we are not using HTML5 we are using some web technologies, however we are using primarily Android type platforms. Basically we are now starting to see the types of decisions the device manufacturers are likely to make and are able to design for that.”

“Generally we find that our platform will work out of the box with most devices but if it doesn’t it’ll take one business day of tweaking to get it right.. We’ve encountered most of the variables of change and we don’t expect there to be that many more as the market evolves” He adds It all sounds rather exciting. (Something that is also clearly detectable in Samani’s voice is not just the passion he has for his product but the general excitement that smart glasses will changethe world in the not too distant future) But let’s not forget the huge amount of excitement when Glass was first announced.

The future of field service is going to be very different when the Smart Glasses revolution finally arrives says Pristine IO CEO Kyle Samani...

When Google announced the retirement of their Glass Explorer program some corners of the worldwide media denounced this as an admission of failure.

Despite huge early attention surrounding the smart glasses, the product had never quite lived up to the hyperbole and a growing number of less than sympathetic reports featuring Glass (not least to mention the widespread adoption of the newly coined term Glasshole) had meant that a shadow was being cast across Google’s latest centre piece.

For the naysayers the closing of the public beta Explorer program was a final nail in the coffin for Glass. In fact the truth remains very different.

In fact taking Glass out of the famous Google X research and development facility and moving the division into the main Google HQ was anything but an admission of failure. Actually it was a statement of intent – as was putting Tony Fadell (the creator of the original iPod and the Nest smart thermostat) at the helm.

 

What Google have done however, is take a step back from the world of the consumer and the increasingly blurred lines of fashion and technology and turned far more of it’s attention to the world of business.

An obvious, yet intelligent move given that a) the potential application of Smart Glasse is massive within industry – especially in field service and b) no one product has truly been able to meet the needs of and exploit the massive potential of wearables in field service.

Of course having the hardware is great, but to unleash the real power of such a device we need dedicated apps. For that we need developers that truly understand the audience they are working for.

So Google established the Glass at Work program.

A program where they selected the brightest and the best development companies working on Glass and gave them the support needed to help them flourish.

It’s a select group with only ten certified Glass at Work partners listed by Google currently. One of those companies is Austin based Pristine.io and to find out more about what the next chapter holds for Glass (and other similar products) in field service, we caught up with their CEO Kyle Samani.

The company is young, but they have a strong vision and are also clearly ambitious. “We started Pristine a little under two years ago” Samani begins “I started Pristine in May 2013 because Google announced Glass in February 2013. I just got really excited about the potential of a hands free computer in the workplace and I’ve been doing this full time ever since and having a blast” he adds.

 

Indeed Samani has the credentials to do well. As mentioned in the introduction, an understanding of the end-users that Pristine’s product is designed for is a large factor in their potential success and Samani whose background prior to launching Pristine was in the design and development of EMR systems for healthcare organisations was certainly well placed to step up to the plate

“I studied finance at NYU and I’ve been programming ever since I was a kid. I’ve always been at the cross section of business and technology” Samani explains.

So what led him to launching Pristine? Is it a case of being the right guy at the right time in the right place?

“Pretty much the moment Google announced Glass that’s when I had my Eureka moment – I thought that’s what I’m going to go and do.”

He admits “Someone was going to go out there and make the software to make this thing useful for the enterprise and I was dead set from the moment I saw it that it was going to be me.”

And it certainly seems that Samani has getting things right so far as his fledgling company has rapidly grown in the two years since inception.

Pristine now has over 20 employees and perhaps more importantly over 30 customers. Also whilst a background in medical systems provided a natural opening for Pristine, their customers are not confined to this space.

In a way that somewhat mirror’s Rugged Tablet manufacturer Motion Computing ,whilst they exploited a niche within the healthcare sector, it was soon apparent that within the horizontal sector of field service there lay a far greater prize and this is now a core segment.

 

As Samani explains “Our customer base is pretty broad, it does include healthcare but it also includes a lot of other companies outside of healthcare as well.”

“For example right now we are working with a large manufacturing company that produces conveyor belts, so big heavy industrial machinery, and those guys are seeing a huge amount of potential in the platform. We’re also working with companies now in the auditing space within food production for example.”

He continues outlining the variety of companies that could benefit from adopting Smart Glasses into their work-flow.

“Basically we’re seeing adoption of our technology in any environment where you have heavy equipment that if it’s not functioning, it’s going to effect the profit of the business operation. From lab diagnostics in a hospital to packaging equipment in a factory.”

“We even have one company we are working with in construction and for them a big bottleneck in terms of getting their work done is just getting an architect out on site.”

“So they are using our technology to replace the six hour flight and five hour drive. That’s essentially wasted time and expense for them but now they can have a guy on-site with a pair of smart glasses and an architect dialling in remotely avoiding the wastage”

 

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Check out the next part of this interview where Samani discusses why smart-glasses can improve both field technicians lives and field service companies bottom line plus why the market is about far more than just Google...

 

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