On Getting Buy-In

Every integration project, big or small, requires customer buy-in, and sometimes that can be the most difficult part. But with its free full-feature trial mode, inherent flexibility, and intuitive design, Ignition is making it easier than ever to get customers on board. Hear how members of the Ignition community are disrupting outdated expectations and giving customers exactly what they need.

Transcript:

00:13
Bart Mans: When I take a look at customers, we have, of course, different type of customers, small companies, big companies, but what they all have in common is that they have been investing in automation, of course, since the beginning. And some companies really invested in the PLC programming; otherwise invested in ERP systems, some in SCADA, some in MES. But what they all have in common is that there is a gap between the PLC and the ERP system. And some have the SCADA, some have the MES, but not everything is aligned in most cases or is aligned, but with all software needs replacement. And what Ignition is enabling us is to fill that gap. We can fill that gap in one step, dropping a complete MES SCADA system at a customer, or really planning a little seed and just connecting the PLC to the ERP system by just telling how many products we created.

01:02
Bart Mans: But with just limited functionality, we can already have a huge difference on the customer because a lot of customers still write things down on papers and spreadsheets, type everything in, and then they do some analysis. And we can automate that. And with dropping the little seeds, we have just, we need limited licensing we need limited programming hours. But when that seed is dropped, it already has a benefit for the customer. And whenever the customer is fine and is happy with the results, we can grow that little seed to becoming a small plant. So we build bigger applications, and eventually Ignition can solve the complete gap between the PLC and the ERP system. And that, yeah, that's really enabling us, our customers also to grow.

01:42
Phillip Bourner: To start, customers are kind of weary about what they can ask for or stuff that are above what was initially planned. They're used to the old model, of you have to pay a lot more you have to change your license. But as you work with them and they figure out, oh, we can get exactly what we need here. By the end, the asks are pretty complex and pretty fun to try to integrate so that they're happy with the final product.

02:07
Bart Mans: If we take a look at the different customers, we have almost all of them. They have policies. So they only work with Siemens equipment, or they only work with Allen Bradley equipment, or just Microsoft equipment. We are then searching how to implement Ignition. We're not really searching for gaps in those policies, but those policies often don't describe, for instance, that you can use a historian or an engineer can do some trials. And those policies often prevent people from buying software. But with Ignition, since it's free to try, we can just implement a little seed, we call it, at a company. And we use Ignition just as an historian. And when it's running as an historian, people see the benefits, and they try to use it as a real SCADA system, or they use it as a small MES system, or just a HMI, or just reporting tool. And when they see the benefits, they can build some quick screens, they can build some reports, and such, and they can present it to the management. And the management sees it, and they say, "Hey, wow, that's cool. Can we implement this?" And that's how we get through, how we get through those policies. That's really cool to do so.

03:10
Alicia Lomas: When I get into a new role and I'm either pitching Ignition or maybe I've already added Ignition to the factory, some people might come in 'cause they came from oil and gas or some industries that are pretty firm in what they use and really haven't adopted newer technologies or are slower to adopt newer technologies. They might come to me and be like, I don't understand why you used Ignition. That's not gonna work. I really need my DCS system because that's the way we've always done things. And it's a pretty easy sell. And one of the things that tells me that I'm successful is when those people come back to me and they say, "Wow, I had my doubts, but working within the system that you created, your SCADA system, it works. Like I expected it not to work, but now I'm using it, and it does all the same things that my DCS system did."

04:03
Alicia Lomas: "I had my doubts." And, it's always very rewarding to me to be like, "Yep, I know." I mean, I really think when you using this tool, you can build it to be like any of those other things, but you have the flexibility to go outside of the box. You're not defined to this canned system or how this thing looks in those other softwares. You can customize it; you can do whatever you want with it. So it's just very powerful. And I've definitely been able to kind of prove that it's the way to go to some of those people that were just very stuck on the old way of doing things. Or one particular software platform.

04:41
Bart Mans: When I take a look at how the situation was nine years ago, we really had to tell the world that, not the world, Europe, that Ignition was available. Of course, in the United States and Ignition was already really popular, but in Europe, it was really limited. We are close to Germany. So Siemens is a big competitor here. But we focused on Ignition, and we brought the word to our customers, and in the beginning, we went into every conversation and we said, "Hey, here, there is Ignition; is it something for you?" And now we get questions from customers: "Hey, we need Ignition. Can you help us with it?" So the question is really changing, and that that's really enabling us to grow.

05:19
Julio Velasco: When you have a company that is a disruptor, it's gonna make people uncomfortable. In a good way and a bad way. People were used to using the same software that they knew by heart for years. So of course, when you present a new tool and they're not familiar with it, they don't wanna seem like, Oh, I'm not competent or I'm not skilled in this software, but I'm gonna stick to what I've known and what's worked for me in the last 10, 15 years. So by introducing the software to my team, I was able to not only get projects and create those solutions for customers, but also prove to the rest of the project managers that it's a tool that you can make money. It's a tool that can make customers happy. It's a tool that the engineers could easily learn in less than a year. Sometimes it would take more than a year to learn these complicated legacy softwares 'cause just installing them would take you a couple days, which is insane to say. But we would quote, we're gonna sell this software. It's gonna take us three days to install. Again, it sounds weird, and then Ignition, you downloaded in 30 seconds and install it in two minutes, and you're done.

06:28
Arnaud De Clerck: Maybe one or two years that I was working for Spiromatic, they ask me, "Do you know some system that's compatible with multiple brand of PLC?" So mostly Siemens in Europe and Rockwell for US, and also web-based. And at that point, I knew it that, okay, that was the go I needed to push Ignition. That was maybe the easiest pushing I need to make to management at that time. I think it, you take it, maybe, 20 minutes, and they say, "Okay, you're good to go."

07:00
Evelyn Granizo: Now I can say to the customer, "Yes, we can do this using Ignition. No, you won't need another license for that. And no, it won't be expensive."

07:10
J.C. Harrison: Now, when we talk to our customers, we just say Ignition, and most of them already have adopted it in some form or another. And, actually, what happens in our industry and the customers that we tend to service is we give them the initial installation, the initial setup of all the screens, all the reports, all the data connections to all the MES systems. And then they take ownership of it. So they're like, build us another one, and then we'll take it. So that's kind of way it works now.