Predictive InSight improves its DCA and expands its reseller channel.
The last time we spoke with Ed McLaughlin of Predictive InSight, we were introduced to a new predictive analytics and data collection agent (DCA) for the office technology dealer channel. That was last June. Since then, McLaughlin and his partner, Shawn Cashmark, have been on a tear, establishing partnerships and introducing an even more robust version of its DCA in December. More on that later.
Launching a new business in a pandemic may sound ludicrous, but it hasn’t hampered Predictive InSight’s momentum. Already, the company has established reseller partnerships with Hytec Dealer Services and Stramaglio Consulting. Additional reseller partnerships are expected to be announced this year. The partnership with Stramaglio Consulting is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and McLaughlin reports that there will be additional news about the partnership surfacing soon.
McLaughlin is candid about the obstacles Predictive InSight has encountered, most significantly addressing concerns in the channel about the need for another DCA. That said, the difference between the Predictive InSight DCA and others on the market is resonating with those who have seen demos or heard McLaughlin’s and Cashmark’s pitches.
“In all honesty, I’ve yet to find an organization that looks at what we’re doing and goes, ‘Well, that’s nothing new,’” said McLaughlin. “And candidly speaking, what we introduced [in December], the self-healing DCA, really changes the game.”
The self-healing DCA knows when a customer’s network is down and when the devices connected to it are offline. Once the network is up and running again, the DCA doesn’t need to be restarted to capture device data. Instead, as McLaughlin explains it, it self-heals and because of Predictive InSight’s store and forward technology, the packet of information in the queue waiting for the network to come back online is forwarded to the dealer. That means as McLaughlin put it, “zero data loss.”
“That’s not an insignificant event,” observed McLaughlin. “I was talking to a dealer who had as many as 2,700 devices go offline in a given month. Not all needed to be restarted, but a lot did, which means the dealer needed to get permission from the client. It’s time-consuming, and in the meantime, the dealer isn’t receiving the information needed to manage the fleet. This [new capability] makes sure that everything is up and running 100% of the time. There isn’t a dealer out there that doesn’t experience at least some time loss based upon the fact that their DCA went offline and didn’t give them the information. And no one else can say that.”
No doubt McLaughlin has a compelling story to tell with this print management solution. Since introducing it in the U.S. in early June 2020, McLaughlin, Cashmark, and the technical team from EKM, the U.K.-based company that developed the product, have been presenting multiple product demos weekly to dealers and potential resellers. McLaughlin reports that the company is making a lot of progress and that some fairly substantial dealers are ready to transition their entire MIF to the new DCA.
“The big reason everybody is as impressed is number one, the reliability of the data,” reported McLaughlin. “They see it, and it gets confirmed when they test and evaluate the software. But the supply management, the service management, the alert management is substantially different than our competitors’ solutions. The reason is elementary. If you go back to the beginning of the technology, it was all about getting meter readings. You’ve been around long enough to remember when people used to actually phone customers [for this information]. Anything they could do to automate the meter process was a big step forward.”
But that was not the motivation for EKM with Predictive InSight. The DCA was developed to manage the fleet environment, not just collecting meters.
“They developed it with the entire intention of managing alerts, managing the supplies, managing replacement, managing upgrades,” reported McLaughlin. “That put us at an advantage from the get-go, and now, with a mature [dealer channel] that isn’t seeing growth, the efficiencies you need to run your business are rooted in the management of the fleet, not just automated meter readings. Everybody should be focusing on how they can maximize the profitability out of the fleet. We provide that better than anybody else because that is the root of our technology.”
Overall, McLaughlin is pleased with how far Predictive InSight has come since June and where it is heading.
“We’re just scratching the surface,” he said. “There will be other things coming out in the not-to-distant future that will turn people’s heads.”
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