IoT Insider Podcast | Episode 5: Taking our smart building energy management partnership to the next level

Chris Romeika
So a bit of a surprise for this podcast. Myself, Chris Romeika, Operations Director at Pangea, and Bernie McPhillips, Sales Director at Pangea are taking over for this session. So, for you guys who really love Dan, don’t worry, he’ll be back next time. But this is our little takeover. So welcome. What we’re going to be talking about in this podcast is our partnership with Buddy, the Fitbit for buildings solution. And we are announcing a new exciting distributor agreement that we have with Buddy. Buddy’s also been revealed on the Australian Stock Exchange as well. So Bernie, what do you think this means for Pangea, and Buddy in the whole Fitbit for building solution that we have?

Bernie McPhillips
Cheers Chris. Hi, everyone, delighted to be on the podcast this month. I think first of all, just just to kind of cover what the quickly what the product is and what it does. You used a brilliant term, there Chris. The Fitbit for buildings. If this was a video log and not a podcast, you’d see me do a little inverted commas with my fingers. But it does sum up the product perfectly. If anybody wears any form of fitness device on the wrist. It doesn’t wire your mouth shut to stop you consuming calories, it doesn’t give you an electric shock to get you off the couch to go for a run. But it gives you the information that you need in a very visual format with timely prompts and reminders, etc. to allow you to make better decisions about your lifestyle. Yep. And the Buddy solution, that we kind of dubbed ‘FitBit for buildings’ does that, but it’s based around energy consumption in a building. Yep. So it doesn’t turn lights off for you doesn’t turn your aircon off of a weekend when there’s nobody in. But it gives you all of the information that you would need to make much more informed decisions about how you consume energy. A brilliant, brilliant way to describe it.

Chris Romeika
It’s also a bit like, like a fitness tracker as well. And that, you know, it’s really easy to install just like a fitness tracker, you just slap it on your wrist, and you’re off. And that’s the Buddy solution in itself, you know, really easy, doesn’t require traditional effort of you know, going really, really deep into a building and taking everything apart or having all these compatibility issues. It just kind of, you know, watches things, sits back and watches things and then gives the information in a really easy to understand and digestible format.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah it does, absolutely spot on. But we’ve had a relationship with Buddy for quite a while now. Going back almost a couple of years. So what’s actually changed and what we’re keen to speak about today is the way our relationship is structured with Buddy. So signing a new distributor agreement, as opposed to being a reseller for Buddy brings us a lot closer to the solution. It gives us a lot more control around surveying, it gives us a lot more control around deployment and installations. Gives us a lot more capability around troubleshooting as well. So we can give our partners now kind of unprecedented control of this building management solution, which truly can be a game changer for the channel. It’s you know, it’s a great product works brilliantly well, as you say it’s kind of a relatively straightforward sale and install. etc. Really excited about kind of the new form of the agreement and we have a much closer relationship, with Buddy going forward.

Chris Romeika
Yeah. And it’s an important thing these days, with some things like, you know, government regulations, things like the ESOS scheme.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, we haven’t even spoken about that. So far. Today, we thought we’d speak about the benefits of of the product, about reducing energy consumption, whether that’s water, gas, steam, solar, etc. But it’s, yes, actually, it’s legislation at the moment. So for relatively large companies, you need to have, you know, there’s so many 100 employees or turnover x million. But from what I understand that legislation could and is likely to change in the future so it will apply to increasingly smaller businesses going forward. So it’ll actually be compulsory for businesses in the UK to audit and optimise their energy usage. I suppose deep down, it should be something close to our hearts. And should we wait for it to become an obligation? Should we wait for it to become compulsory? Because in our environment, climate, climate change, disposing of plastic, that kind of thing you can’t turn on the TV without seeing something about how the actions of people etc, is having an impact on the world that we live in. So a lot of IoT solutions have environmental impacts don’t they? Vehicle telemetry can be route optimisation, therefore reducing CO2 emissions. There’s so many things like that. So what’s your thoughts on that about do you wait until it’s compulsory?

Chris Romeika
Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of ways there’s a lot of talk about, you know, an individual’s own carbon footprint. You know, it’s all about these days, it’s all about being responsible, environmentally responsible, and considerate. So, yeah, with, you know, with, with the Buddy system, and with the government push, you know, the natural progress is to just start thinking about, you know, the company that you may own or, or operate in or work in, you know, what impact does that have, you know, on the environment, and in stuff like that. I mean, with the Buddy part as well, you know, the other bit about monitoring, especially sort of a real time monitoring, you know, tracker fitness tracker style was that in the past with, you know, you’d get sort of a quarterly or an annual bill or something like that for your energy. Yeah. And, you know, by the time you see the impact compared to the last quarter, you’re like, Oh, well, okay, that’s, that’s been a whole quarter, I’m going to make some changes now. But you know, you could sort of forget that, or put it by the wayside, but with something like Buddy, you know, you’re not looking at something quarterly, you’re looking at something every few minutes, every 15 minutes or so. And that’s a very good feedback loop as well. Because even if something as simple as like, you know, the lights have been on in this room in the meeting room all day, when they didn’t need to, you can have immediate, you know, changes like don’t use the lights, see your energy usage drop, same deal with like, you know, your hot water or electricity, or, you know, whatever it is that you happen to be monitoring, monitoring, with the Buddy solution.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah. As we said before about the, if you wear any form of fitness device, it’s, it’s the prompts and the reminders, it’s always timely, it reminds you to, you know, you haven’t been active enough, today, take more steps, if possible, and then that then often has an immediate impact on you, I’ll walk the long way home, I’ll take the stairs instead of using the elevator. And the same applies to the way we use and manage our energy to be able to prompt you to kind of before I go home tonight, I will make sure all the all the lights are off, I will make sure that the air con’s not on unnecessarily that people have powered down, their PCs etc. Yeah, you know, consuming energy unnecessarily.

Chris Romeika
And also, the way that the information is displayed visually, is really, really, you know, it’s really current very compelling. And that as well. So, you know, even in the Pangea office, whoever, you know, everyone’s welcome to come down. But in the Pangea office, we’ve got it displayed on a nice, like, flat screen TV. And visually, you know, you’ve got graphs in like sort of, you know, colour coded schemes, and you know, it’s really clear, and it’s very, it’s very nice to look at in sort of show to someone as a centrepiece, like, in a conference room, or a reception area or something like that, like, what’s actually going on. You know, it’s just the system’s great at, like monitoring usage and energy. But it’s not just sort of sending you dull, email reports or anything like that. It’s got a really, really good visual interface.

Bernie McPhillips
And we’ve had it installed in our office for quite some time. And I’m asking because I genuinely don’t know, I mean, what what’s the impact been of the solution in our office?

Chris Romeika
We hooked it up for for electricity and for lighting to start with, there’s some good examples there. So we just naturally started to be more mindful of, of leaving lights on in a room, like the conference room I mentioned before, you know, just more mindful of turning things off. And once you actually see like, you know, the little energy graphs drop down or just have that immediate response to changes that you’re doing, you know, it just prompts you to sort of naturally naturally be more mindful of what’s going on.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, I agree. Indeed. So as we all know, we speak very proudly about Pangea, as a channel only business we only work through resellers, we have more than 180 of them now in the UK. So I think this represents a massive opportunity for our resellers, not just because legislation is already in place and that legislation could change in the future, to bring more and more UK businesses into scope. Yep. But it’s a great solution, market leading, it’s easy to install, as you’ve said, easy to manage going forward. There’s margin to be made. It’s a great conversation to have with your clients about how you can add value to that relationship. I can help them to have positive impact on the environment, the world that we all live in as well. And because now of our enhanced relationship with Buddy, we’re closer to the solution. Better support, better capability around install, management and troubleshooting, etc. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to get involved.

Chris Romeika
Yeah a very low cost of entry. You know, modestly, you know, it’s really good value. Yeah. Compared to other solutions out there.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, it really is. I suppose. It’d be a good thing to tell people what to do or where to go for more information?

Chris Romeika
Yeah, what we should do is go to the Pangea website, which is pangea-group.net and go to a link near the top called what we offer and down the bottom. And alongside our other products, you’ll see something called Smart Building Energy Management, once again, coined it Fitbit for buildings, which is a very catchy thing to use, very relevant, and all the informations there on the webpage and have a look at it. You can see some pictures of what the actual dashboards and the setup looks like. And if you need to know more information, get in contact, there’s a contact form at the bottom or if you’re an existing Pangea partner, just get in touch with your account manager.

Bernie McPhillips
Spoken like a true Sales Director there. Yeah, I don’t think I’d ever learn what you know anyway. Really enjoyed this and enjoyed the takeover. Yeah, I’m not sure we’ll give Dan it back. What do you think we’ll just keep hold of it? Yeah, we’ll just keep talking about other stuff. We really appreciate your time, everyone. Thanks for listening. I look forward to your feedback. get in contact with us your existing account manager, contact form on the website like Chris has said on Twitter, and please subscribe to our newsletter going forward as well. Lots of different ways to stay in touch with us and keep informed of all our future news and developments. Cheers.

Chris Romeika
Thank you Bernie. And thank you wherever you are, and have a great day, evening, afternoon or night.