I’m always looking to broaden my knowledge about companies in our industry, whether it’s through attending dealer shows, analyst events, visiting with vendors and dealers or simply meeting colleagues and friends out to talk shop.
Innovolt brought me down to their headquarters in Atlanta Georgia for an overview and to meet their management team.
Innovolt bills themself as the nation’s leader in electronic asset protection for business. They’re not simply offering surge protection, but rather, complete power protection and asset management software that can drastically improve the reliability and lifespan of electronics.
I was thrilled to be invited down to see their offices and I have to say, Innovolt are about the nicest bunch of people you’ll meet. Their facility is a beautiful office in the heart of Buckhead – a great area in Atlanta. They’re growing rapidly and they are in the process of expanding their office, knocking out walls and effectively doubling their space. Besides the Atlanta office, Innovolt has some engineering in Florida as well as offices in South Africa, a market that is proving to be very receptive to the firm.
Innovolt is the evolution of technology born from the world-renown laboratories of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In fact, Georgia Tech is still affiliated with Innovolt in some ways.
During my visit, I met with Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Peter Janico, VP of Marketing Malinda Wilkinson, VP Walter Crowder, VP of Enterprise Sales Mark Newton and Director Justin Berghoff. The crew provided me with an excellent overview about where Innovolt began and where they’re going.
I always figured the biggest threat to my printer, computer, TV and gadgets was a freak lighting strike or something like that. Wrong. I received quite an education during my visit. Mark explained how dirty power and fluctuations truly impact hardware reliability. “This isn’t surge protection. If you want a surge protector, go to Best Buy and get a cheap one there. This is protection against dirty and fluctuating power,” he told me.
Fluctuating power is a serious issue. Without the proper tools like those from Innovolt, it can be difficult, if not impossible to diagnose.
Have you ever had a device installed at a customer site that just wouldn’t run reliably no matter what you did? Boards would repeatedly fail, weird error codes, etc.? You may suspect it’s the power but when you tell this to the customer their response is typically “no it’s not we don’t have any power issues, and we’re using a surge protector.” They may even go as far as to stick a meter into an outlet showing you the power levels are fine.
Well, maybe they were at that precise moment they took the meter read, but what happens when you’re not there? What’s the effect of the microwave or refrigerator on the other side of that wall? Or when the air conditioning kicks in. Or, maybe the power grid provides inconsistent power at certain times of the day. This unreliable power can adversely affect electronics. It may not provide the spike that would cause a surge protector to shut off the power, but it can shorten the life span of many of the components within the device.
The Electrical Power Research Institute estimates that power issues cost the U.S. Industry nearly $190 billion per year. The issue is, The Grid was designed over 100 years ago to deliver power to analog devices. Today’s devices have a low tolerance to voltage level fluctuations.
Power fluctuates and boards fry; it’s as simple as that. Or maybe the device just doesn’t work properly. Both Grid and building disturbances from outdated or old wiring directly impact the reliability of equipment. Traditional surge protectors do not protect the majority of voltage events affecting these devices. Innovolt’s technology does.
It makes a lot of sense to me, but what really got me sold on Innovolt was their videos. One that was particularly memorable was from another service intensive industry. IVM is a vending management service provider. They keep vending machines up and running. After partnering with Innovolt, IVM saw a decrease in physical service calls of 80%. These were their words, not mine. 80%! Click here to watch the video.
Innovolt has spent considerable time working with copier and printer manufacturers and some of them actually bundle Innovolt technology with all products sold on the direct/branch side. To me, it seems like every manufacturer should embed this technology into the hardware. Copiers should just come with it. I have no doubt that someday, they will.
In a nutshell, Innovolt has developed a microprocessor that’s smaller than a business card. This microprocessor is embedded into electronic devices where it detects abnormalities in the electricity flowing through the device, at which point it either evens out the current or shuts down the device.
Beyond the protection, the microprocessor is gathering data on the electrical usage of the device. This in turns allows customers to keep track of power consumption, perform remote diagnostics or even turn the device off and on.
The bottom line is this; many of the manufacturers you represent and sell against use this technology to improve their product reliability. We are all constantly looking for that silver bullet to magically increase revenue. Well, here it is. Try it on your own MIF for a few months to see how you like it. I don’t know if they can cut your service calls as much as they did for the vending machine service provider discussed earlier, but if I were an office equipment reseller with a service fleet, I would absolutely look into this technology. Any reduction in service calls goes right to your service margins and that’s what it’s all about.
Andy Slawetsky
President, Industry Analysts, Inc.
