Bringing Your Legacy Product into the Digital Age

by Dillon Jensen

JASM Co-Founder

Introduction

Remote Monitoring is a crucial component of IIoT and digital transformation. The ability for you (the OEM) and your customer to access your product/equipment from anywhere, is very intriguing. Remote control dashboards, real-time alerts & historical data compliance is a clear value-add for many products.

Remote Monitoring is a much more proven investment today than it was just a few years ago. When the concept was new, some just considered it a “nice-to-have” feature, but in many cases today, it is more realistically a “need-to-have” if you want to keep your product competitive and also ensure that your business will remain a key player in its segment during the mass adoption of Industry 4.0.

In this article, I’ll explain a high-level overview of some of the factors to consider when attempting to add remote monitoring to your existing product. This article is intended for business leader’s weighing their options, it’s not a how-to manual for engineers.

The key takeaway from this article can be summarized in one word: practical. Although there are many ways to create a working IoT/Remote Monitoring solution, overcoming engineering challenges doesn’t pay the bills, customers however, do. The intended result is to find a remote monitoring solution that works for the business, and pays dividends year after year, not just create a functional prototype with no viable path to commercialization.

Before we get into “How”, let’s start with “Why”.

Aligning digital and business goals

Upgrading a legacy product might be done for a few reasons: increasing desirability to drive sales, extending the product lifespan, or retaining key customers. The benefits are clear, is there any reason not to upgrade? A calculated decision to add remote monitoring to a product is usually the right one, but there are exceptions to be aware of.

Before investing precious business resources like time, money & energy into upgrading a legacy product, you need to confirm that customer or business value is created through remote monitoring: This is your “Why”.

Ask yourself: Who is the real beneficiary of adding remote monitoring to your legacy product?

Is it your customer? (Ex: They benefit from real time alerts & peace of mind
Is it you (the OEM)? Ex: It provides an insightful tool for your maintenance team
Is it both?

Fortunately, most industrial monitoring applications do have benefits for both the customers & OEMs, but if your customer isn’t benefiting, don’t expect them to pay for it.

If you have competitors that are already offering remote monitoring options with a similar product, the decision to upgrade should be especially difficult to ignore.

If you are going to be the first company in your segment to offer remote monitoring, that doesn’t mean you should wait around for your competitors to offer it first. If you have determined that it creates value for your customer, it may provide a decisive advantage in growing your market share, due to your industry-leading product.

Now, pricing the remote monitoring service is a difficult task even in a vacuum. While pricing the hardware is relatively straightforward, the subscription model can get intricate. To keep this article focused, we’ll be writing a separate article about that soon.

Assuming you have formally decided to invest in upgrading your product & business through remote monitoring, it’s time to find a practical implementation – the “How”.

Hardware considerations

Remote Monitoring features are primarily accessed via software, such as websites, mobile apps & even software APIs. Because of this, it is often deeply associated with “the cloud”. With this black box known as “the cloud” in mind, it’s easy to forget that remote monitoring starts at the hardware level.

Appropriate hardware IS required to make your dashboard come to life – but does this mean you’ll have to rip out the old PCB or PLC system and design a whole new one? Not at all. You will however, need to add some new hardware.

This hardware, at a minimum, needs to perform 2 tasks:

Collect data from your product
- Ideally via an available communication interface, such as Modbus RS-485
- New sensors could be added instead, but this gets more complex
Forward this data into the cloud

Sometimes other tasks are required too, such as executing automation logic or storing local data as a backup. Any quality remote monitoring hardware should also perform all data transfer securely, and be capable of secure OTA (Over the Air) updates.

On the topic of connectivity, it might be any combination of Ethernet, WiFi, Cellular, or something else (ex: LoRa with a gateway), it depends on your unique use-case. Each option has tradeoffs between cost, complexity, ease of use, and availability.

For example: If you are seeking the easiest setup experience for your customer, cellular is a great option. On the down side, it’s typically the most expensive (both in hardware & data usage). Using cellular also assumes that a usable cellular signal is even available in typical customer install locations, which is a dangerous assumption to make, as it depends on external factors such as the location, and possible interference from other nearby equipment.

Remember that word, practical? Even if your hardware “works”, it has to work smoothly for the majority of your customers, or you’ll have invested your entire remote monitoring budget into an insightful, but commercially irrelevant project.

For a retrofit though, the best path to remote monitoring is usually a straightforward one. As a rule of thumb, keep the hardware simple. Here’s why:

Lower hardware costs
Complex data processing logic should be offloaded to the (scalable) cloud
Less opportunity for engineering roadblocks, ensuring a quicker time to market

For a more in-depth journey on selecting hardware, see this article instead.

Of course, if your product already has internet access, excellent. At most, you might need a simple firmware update to start forwarding all data towards a server in “the cloud”.

Speaking of “the cloud”, let’s talk about software.

Software options

The discussion for remote monitoring software can be even more overwhelming than the one for hardware. There are many possible solutions, try not to get lost in the weeds.

Remote monitoring software, may provide any combination of the following features:

Real-time dashboard
Send alerts
Access/download historical data
Product specific features (company branding, remote control, AI insights)

All of the above features are intended to benefit your customer, which is great. The #1 priority should be a good customer experience, but the monitoring service needs to provide a good management experience for you (the OEM) as well.

Depending on the ideal level of hardware & business integration, other tasks might be desired too:

Provide a higher level business interface for customer management & support
- ex: Manage which user account(s) have access to any given product in the field
- ex: Notifications when a subscription payment is due for customer X
Manage OTA (Over-the-Air) updates for your hardware
Aggregating OEM payments for data, API usage & email/text/call alerts

The more specific you are in what you need, the simpler it will be to find what you are looking for. This is easier-said-than-done, because remote monitoring is a multi-variable equation. If you change the hardware used, the software integration may grow in complexity, and even your recurring costs may change! Frustrating, I know.

I think it is best to start by imagining an ideal customer experience with your newly upgraded “smart” product. Next, prioritize the core elements of that experience, using the Pareto Principle (AKA The 80/20 Rule).

“The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.”

Finally, ignore everything else. There are too many edge-case features to consider, after a certain point, it all becomes noise, and the software becomes less usable. Assuming your customer even has the time (they don’t), they will not want to read a dense 60 page instruction manual to make the most of your product. Just move on, you can always update the software later, when your customers are asking for it (and willing to pay).

Once you have your ideal software in mind, you need to make it a reality, but how?

Build it
- This can be done in-house or with a custom development agency.
  - (+) The end result can be very custom to your product & brand
  - (-) Requires heavy upfront investment
  - (-) Much longer time-to-market
License it
- The level of development effort required varies greatly.
  - (+) Lower upfront investment required
  - (+) Faster MVP & time-to-market
  - (-) Less flexibility for unique use-cases

There are more considerations too:

Once it is built, who is going to maintain it?
Who will provide ongoing customer support?
What is the subscription cost per unit?
Does it require specific hardware/software (vendor lock-in)?

Though I understand this comes off as biased, I sincerely believe the vast majority of companies should license & outsource the bulk of their remote monitoring solution development process.

Why? As a small to midsize OEM, you should focus on your product & the problem that it solves for your customers. Though remote monitoring will become a crucial tool in your product and business, you should focus on bringing the solution to your customers, not re-creating the technology behind the solution.

Licensing a solution means you can take advantage of a company that specializes in the IIoT domain, and leverage software built from their expertise into your product experience. It’s less financially risky, more proven, and allows you time to focus on the other areas of your business, such as marketing your new remote monitoring service.

Back to that word, practical: Don’t reinvent the wheel.

If you have your criteria selected and prioritized, and are looking for a more detailed discussion on building or licensing your remote monitoring software (with specific options evaluated), check out this article.

Conclusion

Wrapping it all up, adding remote monitoring to an existing product is a challenge, but when executed properly, it will upgrade your business, not just your product. Throughout your discussions about implementing remote monitoring or other IIoT capabilities, make sure to keep an emphasis on the word “practical”.

A successful remote monitoring implementation requires all of the following:

A clear value-add to your product
Profitable & sustainable subscription model for your customers
Delivered on time & with limited upfront risk

I hope this article has offered some high level clarity in the often overwhelming task of bringing your product into the digital age. Even though remote monitoring adoption will still require an in-depth discussion within your company, ideally, you will now have identified some of the more pressing questions to start with.

If you’re looking for the easiest way to bring your legacy product online, reach out to us for a free discussion about upgrading your unique business with remote monitoring.

At JAS monitoring, we offer intuitive monitoring software & lightweight hardware, striving to create the easiest way for OEMs to make the leap to Industry 4.0. Forget risky investment & unpredictable timelines: whether it is simple text alerts or a turnkey white-label monitoring service for your product, we look forward to hearing from you.