Sustainable Supply Chain

Speeding Up Maintenance Work In Your Supply Chain - A Chat With Arkyn's Nicolai Elqvist, and Martin Holm Nielsen

December 16, 2022 Tom Raftery / Martin Holm Nielsen / Nicolai Elqvist Season 1 Episode 279
Sustainable Supply Chain
Speeding Up Maintenance Work In Your Supply Chain - A Chat With Arkyn's Nicolai Elqvist, and Martin Holm Nielsen
Digital Supply Chain +
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

Working with ERP systems in Supply Chain can be particularly challenging - particularly for remote field service workers.

This is the problem Arkyn set out to resolve. They have created a series of field service iOS apps which are persona based, fast, and intuitive enabling field workers more efficient access to backend systems.

I invited Arkyn's Martin Holm Nielsen, and Nicolai Elmqvist to come on the podcast to tell us more.

Elevate your brand with the ‘Sustainable Supply Chain’ podcast, the voice of supply chain sustainability.

Last year, this podcast's episodes were downloaded over 113,000 times by senior supply chain executives around the world.

Become a sponsor. Lead the conversation.

Contact me for sponsorship opportunities and turn downloads into dialogues.

Act today. Influence the future.



Support the show


Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous supporters:

  • Lorcan Sheehan
  • Krishna Kumar
  • Olivier Brusle
  • Alicia Farag
  • Joël VANDI
  • Luis Olavarria
  • Alvaro Aguilar

And remember you too can Support the Podcast - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent Digital Supply Chain episodes like this one.

Podcast Sponsorship Opportunities:
If you/your organisation is interested in sponsoring this podcast - I have several options available. Let's talk!

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it.

Thanks for listening.

Martin Holm Nielsen:

We tend to see uh, customers who have expectations of very long times to set up and implement. And we really also want to change that because normally people say, okay, if you're doing an SAP project, it takes months to do it. And we really want to cut that from months to weeks. Maybe even days

Tom Raftery:

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Digital Supply Chain podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Supply Chain Podcast. My name is Tom Rry and with me on the show today, I have my two special guests, Martin and Nicolai. Martin and Nicolai, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourselves with maybe Martin going first?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Thank you Tom. Yeah, I'm Martin from Arkyn. I have a background of working with SAP for the last. 20 years or so, and we are delighted to be here today and, and talk to you.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And Nicolai.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yeah. And I'm Nicolai Elmqvist I'm the CEO here at Arkyn. And have a vast background from the startup scene myself. And yeah, turn very much being part of, this new venture of, Arkyn.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And for people who might be unaware, can you tell us what is Arkyn?

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yes, sure. so Arkin is a B2B SaaS, startup, that is on a mission to make it easy for employees working at big enterprise companies to use their ERP software. And we do that because we see that there is an issue in the market where you say things like SAP, for example, is an amazing system. It can do many great things for, for huge companies. But it's also a system that is made for super users and that means that for normal employees that needs to use the system, it could be a very hard process with a lot of friction that they need to go through in order to actually just understand how to use the system, how to transfer data, how to gather information, and, and all of that. And at the same time we also see people working in could say non desk environments. So that could be out in the field or it could be on the factory floor. That could be maintenance technicians, for example, with the need of getting access to information from the ERP software. Then it's much easier for them to, you know, use a mobile device instead of needing to run around with a, with a computer, for example. So Arkyn is, trying to solve this problem by creating what we would call the perfect toolbox for, for these people where we are focusing on functions that they need in order to perform the work really well. And then design these apps that we are creating for these people in a way that makes it very easy for them to use it from the very get-go. So they don't, don't need to get on a very long IT courses just to be able to use these systems. So we are very much about creating a tool that creates a frictionless experience for people working at enterprise companies. They're right now very much focused on the field of or cause the field of, of, of maintenance and focusing on the, on enterprises with manufacturing and field service. But really much creating something that is easily adaptable within these organizations. And that can be used by uh, yeah, by people from the very good go. That's what we all about.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And you mentioned that you're a startup. How long has Arkyn been in operation and what was the Genesis story? I mean, what made you guys decide that this would be a good thing to do?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Yeah. We've been in operation for around almost two years now. We came out of a consultancy firm that's been actually doing this custom bespoke solutions on top of SAP data and SAP processes. So we've been doing like user-centric mobile solutions towards SAP for 15 years or so, and kind of doing them one off every, every time we engage with a new customer and then they were kind of, we, we always saw that there were no kind of really good off the shelf solution out there. So we've been doing it over and over and over again. And we have a lot of experience with this fairly complex field within sap, on, plant maintenance and, and customer service. So we decided that say, okay, this, architecture that we curated and way of doing it would be worth doing as a, as off the shelves solution. So after really doing a lot of these solutions, we said, okay, let's do it as a SaaS company instead and try to provide what we don't see out there in the market. Cause one of the, things we always did in the consultancy firm was actually go out and do field research. So we went out and climbed wind turbines and looked at railways and looked at you know, big cables and machines, stuff like that. And then what we always saw was that, for these non-desktop workers, IT was always in the way. They're not really utilizing everything from, from the backend system, all the good data that was actually in there. So we are kind of a, of a mission to change that, saying, okay, let's get this digital twin or get this information that is in the e r p core system out in the hands of people actually standing in the field who can utilize this data. So that was kind of the, the legacy and why we did it.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And you mentioned manufacturing and field service management are those like the two areas that you're in or are you broadening out into more?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

That's the main two areas we're in really focusing on, all kinds of asset maintenance, whether it be a factory or it's a machine out in the field somewhere. So, so we are really looking at providing the, the perfect digital toolbox. They have all the, the tools they need to keep the assets healthy and alive and performing. So why not also have the perfect digital tool in, in the toolbag, so to speak.

Tom Raftery:

Okay.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

And Tom also just to, to elaborate a little bit more on on this. I think first, you know, ERP systems are incredibly big. You know, there is so many functions and fields and, and such. And with the short time that we have been in the market, it's been part of our whole strategy to focus on one area and then do it extremely well within that area. So instead of trying to just both be able to deliver for multiple e o P systems, being able to deliver on multiple departments within the the enterprise companies, then we have chosen just to say, okay, let us focus on one thing, and then do that extremely well and create something that we know that people are so happy about using uh, that, you know, they will tell all their friends about this. So, so that's why we're focusing on this now. Looking forward maybe let's say five, 10 years from now, I'm pretty sure that Arkyn will be in, in many other places or providing services for other parts of the businesses. But right now our main focus is uh, is this an an extremely big say, population of uses that are working within this, at this field currently.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And when you say that you're making it better and delightful for users, in what way are you doing that? How is what you are doing better than what is already delivered by SAP or by some of the partner companies?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Well, I think user-centric usability part is, is really where we have kind of our niche. And, and for us usability is really about two main things. One thing is of course, simplicity. So as Nikola I mentioned, there is a lot of features there's a lot of functions and a lot of the tools we see out there today try to be everything to everyone. And we are really trying to, to keep it simple and focus on, on, on the core task that we need. Support and making those extremely easy to use. And another part of, usability for us is, performance. Performance is, front and center for any usability metrics in, in my mind. If, the app doesn't perform well, doesn't matter how nice you made it or how beautiful design you have or how simple it can be if it doesn't perform well it's, it's just not a good user experience. So, performance is the, the key of, of what we deliver and, and actually something where we yeah, curated this architecture over the last 15 years in order to give this blazing fast performance that's, gives you real time experience of, of interacting with the SAP system. So that is, that is really where I think we, we stand out in, in comparisons with other solutions out there.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

And I think it's worth mentioning that we've built a platform that is line in between the on-premise SAP system from the customer and then our apps. And that enables this kind of, of really effective real-time synchronization of data where for, it's so important that people really get this real-time feeling around exchanging data with their local system. Because that's what we used to from the consumer apps that we are using on a, on a phone as well. You know, everything today is more or less in real time or with very short delays. And, and people don't want to sit and wait for a couple of minutes in order to send across data. It's, it's, it gives you kind of a huge stress factor in, in terms of performing your work. Imagine if every time you needed to check an email, you would need to wait two minutes in order to, to see what's in there,

Tom Raftery:

have you used, have you used Outlook lately? Cuz it on my machine. It's really slow. So I know exactly what you're talking about.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

It, it, it happens sometimes, right? But, but you know, it, it, when it happens, you get a little bit like, what the, what the hell is happening here? Right? And, and, and you wait maybe up till 15 seconds and then you press the button again because you think this cannot be right.

Tom Raftery:

Hmm.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

So, so the whole concept about, you know, creating these perfect tools for, for these people, Is about, obviously simplicity as Martin said, but also about speed understanding that you really get your information right away and you feel that it's snappy, that it that reacts instantly and, and these types of things. So, so I think, and I think that's a differentiator from, from our side in, in the market definitely about this, that we are so focused heavily around speed and perform.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And are you delivering native apps or are you using a Fiori like interface or how do you work that?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

We are working with native apps. Again, one of the key reasons for this is, is actually performance. When you're working within the field of, plant maintenance, there is a lot of data. If you look at big enterprise, big companies, they have thousands and thousands of assets and orders around assets and, yeah, sub structures and stuff like that. So there's a lot of data and a lot of complexity. And when you want that to be like lightning speed search working even offline, stuff like that, there's really no other way than, going native for us. So, so we are really focusing on, on the native experience in order to be able to, to deliver this performance. But there are also other kind of benefits why, or we really have a love for the, for the native platform within W iOS because the security and the scalability of that platform is, is really something that we see fit very well into an enterprise. And also when we look at the years to come, we really hope to see a lot from, you know, machine learning on device. It's not everybody who has like a big cloud CPU somewhere in order to do a lot of machine learning calculations. These new small devices are actually really capable in, in, in that sense. And I think for the upcoming years we'll see a lot of ways to actually improve the daily lives of, of field service workers by using this power right there on the edge of a process with these devices. And, and again, that can also only be, done if, you tap into the native system. So we are, we are really leaning into that and, and using everything from the ecosystem in order to, fulfill the, the, the goal of keeping it simple, keeping it easy, and keeping it high performing.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, and you're, you're doubling down on iOS and not developing for Android at all, is that right?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

We are doubling down on iOS. I think we, we have a good platform in the middle, so, so we can have an Android follow along, but we are doubling down on iOS in order to really utilize the benefits from, from that ecosystem and from an enterprise perspective around security of data on device, security of data in transit everything around that it's just for us, the, the right platform for, for enterprises. So we are really leaning into that.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yes. Yeah, and, and I think just to elaborate on, on, on that coming back to the point about. Being very focused on one thing. That's also one of the reasons why we have chosen just to stick with the, with iOS. But this other part of this is also to understand the nature of, of how our digital tools are deployed for for the workers. So they would usually get a device with the apps pre-installed already as part of say as a tool that they will then use as part of their, their, their workday. So it's not like, you know, that you have a workforce that half of them are just downloading an app from the app store and the other half not do it. No. It will be a tool that, that they will be given. Just like if they would be given a driller, for example, that they need to use as part of their, their work. So, so it works the same way here and that's why we can rely on a hardware component because we know that if the company has already an, an iOS strategy and are deploying iOS devices well then we know that there, and then everybody will use that to, to perform their work. So, so, so, so that's also reason for it.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And are the apps kind of persona based? Cuz I mean, you talk about making it simple, so I'm assuming one of the ways of making it simple is persona based via login or something like that.

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Yeah, all the apps, of course, behind the login so we can fully track with single sign on who is doing what to our beloved ERP system in the back, but that also gives us a, a role concept so that you are, you, you only shown what you need to do in that persona, so you, you're absolutely right.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, cool. Cool. And. What about things like the kind of adoption rate of IT solutions and enterprises in the first place? Because we are still seeing, people going out doing field service with clipboards. No?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that's kind of what we really want to change here. We know that if, you don't have the adoption out in the field, we've seen it so many times that some IT solution gets curated by the headquarter or the IT department of the headquarter. Really focusing on everything around the plumbing and everything is just as lean as possible. But if the user really don't adopt it in the field, and you're going back to clipboards and, and papers and, and whiteboards, then you don't get the value from the investment you made into IT. So, so adoption is key. We knew you need to get something out in the hand of the user and get them to adopt it, and we can only get the adoption if the user experience is excellent and good. You know, it from, from yourself. If, if you're standing waiting for a train and trying to buy a ticket on a, on a new app that you downloaded, if it doesn't work and the train comes, you get highly frustrated and stressed, then you probably won't use that app again unless you don't have any other choice. So, it's the same, it's just that it's from a legacy point of view, E R P software has just never been that user-centric because it's something that's been dictated. We need to use this, but it's not how it works in the real world. People will do what they need to do in order to perform their best, and if that is a whiteboard, they'll use a whiteboard and leave the IT solution behind. So we are really focusing and monitoring on adoption of our solutions so that we're sure that they're getting adopted by the end user. So we sure that you also get the value from the IT investment.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yeah, because I think from our side, we need to make sure that the solutions that we are creating will be successful, implemented within the, the organizations. And we could focus on doing some amazing onboarding say material and then trying to hand that over. And then fingers crossed that someone in inside the, the enterprise company would actually use this onboarding material and then get people up to speed. Or we could work on the product itself and make sure that the onboarding experience within the product is so good that people can more or less understanding from the very beginning. And if not, well then at least have some, some onboarding tutorials within the products that they can u tilize in order to get up to speed, but it should be as easy as pretty much downloading a mobile game from the app store. Go through the, tutorial part of that, and then you should be up and, and running. And that's what we're striving towards to deliver on, on this because otherwise I think we are failing if, we cannot get people that are not IT savvy to, to use this.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And if it's, if it's apps for people who are doing the likes of field service management, there's always the chance I would say a not insignificant amount of time that they're in places with poor connectivity. How do you guys handle that?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Well, all our apps are built for, the occasional disconnect and offline. So similar to, the other apps you download today. If you're offline, you don't really feel or see a big difference. You can still continue with your work. You can still report the time you're doing and then the stuff, the tools you're using or the components you are registering, and it will then get synced back to the ERP system once the connection is live, so to speak. We don't have a sync button that doesn't exist in our apps. It's done all in the background in order to kind of ensure this smooth way of working with, with our apps, whether you are online or offline. But it is of course one of the big challenges that we've actually used the last 15 years trying to technically solve in the best possible manner because, A lot goes on in the ERP system. So when you're syncing data back and forth, you need to know what you're doing. But I think it's something that without tooting our own horn too much, we accomplished quite nicely.

Tom Raftery:

Cool, cool. And I mean, you, you say the apps are fast. What's your definition of fast? What does kind of fast mean to you guys?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

Fast for us means that when you interact with something, like, if you search a list for materials, even though there are like 50,000 materials, you need to get a response within less than a second. You need to go below that one second, maybe 0.7 or something like that in order to actually trick the brain to, to see that there is, there is no lag, there's no, it's, it's just instant. So for it, it's about getting that instant feeling into every aspect of our apps. Whether you are searching for a material in the material master or you're searching for an equipment or functional location, anything in this huge amount of data, it needs to, to react and respond back to you within less than a second.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, cool. Cool.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yeah, and I, and I think also that, some of the feedback that we are also getting from, from the customers we work with is that they simply don't believe that we can deliver this in so fast as we say we can. And We tell them in a meeting they don't believe us. We do a a PoC, where we actually show that, that this is working. They didn't see it again with their own data. They still don't believe us. They then try it themselves. And then at some point they actually get to, to this place where it actually start believing this. And a, and a super, super amazed about it. I don't know if you've watched this this show that is currently on, on Netflix around Spotify that is called the, the playlist where they're trying to create the perfect player where again, we have two components there. There's the one thing about being able to pretty much get every kind of, of Song that is out there in, in the world that has ever been, been published. And then the second part is about giving people this instant experience about when you press the play button, then you'll hear the song immediately. And, and we are trying to do the same with SAP data, pretty much, you know, being able to actually deliver this extremely fast to the user because the whole part about experiencing this kind of, of s snappiness and, and, and realtime experience is so important and will give people a say a new kind of feeling about how to work with them with these things. So the simplicity and the speed that's why the whole fast concept is so, tied into to a core DNA of of Arkyn.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, just outta curiosity, if your customer has a cloud delivered version of SAP versus an on-prem, does that make a, a difference either positively or negatively towards the speed that you deliver the solution?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

No, that, really doesn't matter too much for us. We have a, have an architecture in place where, that isn't really a big issue, so, so either or will work for us.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Fair enough. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, guys. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had or, any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Martin Holm Nielsen:

I had one thing regarding we, we keep saying fast, we have fast apps, we have the fast cloud, everything. Fast, fast, fast. And of course this is because as we've talked about a few times now, performance is so close to our hearts in terms of delivering a good user experience, but we actually wanna put fast in everything we do. And it's also around deployment o of these apps. We tend to see customers who have expectations of very long times to set up and implement. And we really also want to change that because normally people say, okay, if you're doing an SAP project, it takes months to do it. And we really want to cut that from months to weeks. Maybe even days. So, a big part of what our engineering team is also doing is, is looking at how fast can we actually make a new deployment to a new system. And we're having that at at day speed right now, but hopefully we'll get it like in hour speed, so, so we can really be fast around getting the apps up and running towards a system. And of course we are not a hundred percent controlled in that because there's a lot of security and infrastructure and all that part, but we really want to show the customers that we run fast, but we can also deliver fast because time to market in order to, to get these solutions out there is also very important. So I think we can easily say that fast is part of our dna and we try to do it in in everything.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Anything you wanted to add Nicolai?

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Yeah, if people want to learn more about us then obviously they could go to a website at the Arkyn, that's a AR k y n.io. Or uh, find us on LinkedIn and that's just to search for, for Arkyn. And then they will find us uh, there we are hosting webinars now and then we have an upcoming one together with a new partner called SPL Systems around digital twins. And it's gonna be it's gonna be, yeah, already here on Thursday. So, maybe it will be a pre-recording once this podcast is launched. But anyhow it's gonna be amazing thing as well to to be able to deliver to people who are interested in this field.

Tom Raftery:

Cool. Excellent. All right, great. That's been really interesting. Normally at this point of the, the podcast, I, I throw in that question if, if people wanna know more, but we've, we've done that. So fantastic. Nikolai Martin, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Nicolai Elmqvist:

Thank Thank you very much to thanks for having us. It's been a

Martin Holm Nielsen:

pleasure.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to TomRaftery@outlook.com If you like the show, please don't forget to click Follow on it in your podcast application of choice to be sure to get new episodes as soon as they're published Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find a show. Thanks, catch you all next time.

Podcasts we love