The Value of Fast SCADA Installation & Development

When integrators install Ignition for their customers they deliver more bang for the buck in two ways. By an order of magnitude, they save their customers money both on software itself and on the labor to develop applications and deploy them. It's a double-sided benefit for end-users.

If you're an integrator, you might say, "but that's less work for me!" From experience I can tell you that's not true. I've discovered that in the same number of hours you will deliver way more functionality and end-users will love you for it. Then they will ask you to do even more. It's a win-win proposition. Essentially, what I have found is that they finally feel like they are getting the value they always expected.

This is a valuable concept you can use to your advantage as you offer your services.

Also consider this: Who wants to pay for an integrator to spend all week just to install and deploy HMI/SCADA/MES software? That's a huge waste of time and money and it makes the end-user feel like he's getting milked. Enough with that! Why should an installation and deployment take more than a few minutes? Spend the rest of your time building what the customer really wants and deploy it to a hundred clients with just a mouse click.

End-Users Are Beginning To Expect More From Integrators
End-users are starting to take all this for granted. I've been witness to the overwhelming reception of Ignition by end-users once they truly understand it. Hundreds of other integrators have discovered this as well. But now many end-users have come to expect what Ignition delivers as the new norm. When integrators approach these end-users with the old way they're going to get laughed right out of the place. I was recently a witness to a CEO ridiculing an integrator who proposed doing it the old way. It was embarrassing for me to watch.

Virtually all other software I'm aware of is so '90s. Relational databases are a way of life now in manufacturing yet most HMI/SCADA software treats it as an afterthought if they handle it at all. Sure, you could band-aid something together but why would you want to when you could be delivering real value in a fraction of the time? You want to feel loved? Well trust me, that's how you do it.

Offer Higher Value Before Your Competitors Do
Integrators should always be on the look out for better ways to do things more efficiently. Some integrators say, "I just do what the customer tells me." Do that at your own peril because one day the end-user will discover it on his own and some other integrator will be putting it in.

In one case recently, an integrator lost about a year's worth of work when another integrator showed the customer two bids: one for what the end-user requested, and an alternative bid using Ignition. The customer decided to use Ignition because the integrator showed that for the same amount of labor he could deliver more functionality – and more value for the money. He's feelin' the love now!

Ignition - What's the Catch?

This happens so often that I thought I better comment on it. Yesterday I was talking with one of our users who happens to be so jazzed on Ignition that he shows his plant, which uses it, to other people all the time. At the end of a recent showing he told me "they were just standing there drop-jawed but kept asking 'what's the catch?'"

This "what's the catch" question is asked so frequently I'd be totally remiss if I didn't answer it. The answer is "there is no catch."

This is hilarious, but I was once sitting in a conference room with executives of a company with the head of IT grilling me "how can you stay in business if you charge so little?" He was so used to paying insane dollars for marginal functionality that this was his yardstick. It took me about twenty minutes to handle this but I finally asked "why do you think we are charging too little? Have you ever stopped to think maybe the other guys are price gouging you?" Somehow this rang true with him and they bought Ignition.

Consider this, mobile phones used to cost $5.00 per minute and you had to wait for a channel to free up before you could talk. And the mobile units used to cost upwards of $6,000 each. Does that mean that Verizon, ATT and the rest of the cellular companies aren't making money or have a bad business model? Of course not.

Personally, I think this field has been brainwashed into thinking that HMI, SCADA and particularly MES are very hard and complicated and thus have be very expensive. Bull! This simply isn't true.

We have a different model. We sell by the server. That's all. Remember, I myself have been a system integrator for over twenty-two years. That is the perspective we come from. We have always looked for ways to increase the value of our services. Taking three days just to install software is delivering poor value. That's why we deliberately made our installation take only three minutes or so. Then you can take the remaining three days and deliver some real value.

There are certain things that irked me about software as an integrator. Some things just didn't seem right. And these things I've found to be universal. These are the exact points that we've addressed with Ignition. And one of those things is a fair and sensible pricing model. From what we hear, most integrators and end-users agree that we've accomplished just that.

Where's the price?

Ever quote a job for a customer that included HMI and SCADA software? You know how it goes, you're preparing quotes late at night or on a weekend but all the sales reps are enjoying their weekend while you work hard trying to sell their software. This wouldn't be a problem if industrial software companies openly published their prices.

Why is it they are so secretive with pricing? According to an old-hand sales person I know, there are only two reasons for hiding prices. Either they want to be able to cut custom pricing for different customers (whatever they can get away with) or they are trying to suck people into a conversation so they can close a sale.

In my experience both reasons may be applicable to industrial software sales, but on the latter I might add that by conversing with you they often gather intelligence.

For the first, I've seen pricing for industrial software for a fortune 500 company (though I'm sure I wasn't supposed to see it) and it was only 39% of the very best prices I ever heard of for that software, which was shocking to me.

For the second reason, when you get pricing for industrial software the sales rep wants to know who the customer is, what the job is, who the contact is and so forth. This is problematic because sometimes when you're doing comparative pricing the rep runs out afterwards and calls on your customer directly.

Like I have said in the past, most of the policies we adopt at Inductive Automation are based on my prior experiences as an integrator. If you want to know the price of Inductive Automation software just go to our website —it's all right there. There's too much work to get done to mess around with all these goofy pricing games.

Of course, I might be missing the real reason. Are they possibly ashamed of their prices and pricing model? What do you think?

Get IT On Your Side and They'll Seal the Deal For You

As you expand past plant floor controls you begin to enter into the domain of IT. But when you do so you will begin to work with IT folks. Believe me, you want IT on your side or your project will end up on a data island which is useless in an enterprise system.

So how do you do that? Well, first of all you better find out what hardware and software the IT department is willing to support. When I make initial contact with IT folks, I always ask what technology they use. Then I assure them we’ll work with that. This generally makes them very happy. You have to learn to work with them within their envelope. You're not in a position to try and cram something else down their throat. It is only by standardization that they can support huge corporate networks without the job becoming onerous.

The next thing I do is use their terms and refer to the technology they are currently using. If the system you are proposing isn't something they are familiar with or if it uses 1990's technology like DCOM, then you better ditch it and find something else. In short, if they can't relate to it without a bunch of specialized training (which isn't likely to happen) then your project is probably going to die.

But the reverse is true if you can talk their terms and they can wrap their arms around the technology.

IT Could Be Your Best Friend For Sales
In this case, IT is likely to be your biggest proponent and can help you get your project pushed through. I've personally been involved in these situations many times. In one case I had the buy-in of the plant manager, maintenance manager and production manager but I said "now let's get together with you IT department."

The plant manager said "are you SURE you want to do that?" and I said "Yes."

At the start of the meeting the two IT guys had their arms crossed and looked resentful. First I asked them what relational database they used and they said MSSQL Server indignantly. I said great, that's what we use and they perked up a bit.

Then I went to the white board and laid out the system in terms I knew would be acceptable to them. They asked a lot of questions but I answered each in alignment with technology I knew they already were using. Somewhere in the middle of this I saw them flip from being adversarial to helpful. They started asking things like "When do you need this by?", "How much memory do you need?", "Can we run it on a virtual machine?" and in fact they became allies which sealed the deal.

It is an amazing thing to watch how fast EVERYONE else buys-in when IT does. Like I say. You better have them on your side.