Published January 7th, 2010 by admin
Advanced Innovations’ CEO Robert O’Donnell discusses how his company has redefined outsourcing.
Advanced Innovations (AI) defied the economic odds for 2009. When many were reeling from the global economic crisis, AI grew its presence in the US, expanded its customer base and recently closed a deal with Pittsburgh-based smart grid technology company, BPL Global. With additional deals pending, AI expects to increase its year-over-year revenue in the region by 50% in 2010.
Through its differentiated technology and nimble global network, the Enterprise Ireland-supported company has infused the concept of outsourcing with a new level of transparency and “intelligence”. The result is a dynamic product lifecycle management offering that enables emerging companies and those in the sub-$250M category to move their product concepts through development and certification, and into volume production with speed, efficiency, and compelling cost advantages.
Enterprise Ireland Americas staff recently caught up with CEO Robert O’Donnell for an update on AI and its business activities in the US.
EI: Tell us about Advanced Innovations.
ROD: AI has a unique approach to creating the optimal electronics supply chain and managing the product throughout its lifecycle on our web enabled software platform. We offer an effective way for companies to outsource the vast majority of business activities affecting the lifecycle of their product. We provide the infrastructure and expertise to move a company’s product from “ideation” through development, certification and into volume manufacturing. This allows the company to focus on developing intellectual property and other core activities like strategic market development and sales. And it means they can scale up or down to meet changing market conditions.
We’re headquartered in Ireland but have had an operations center in the US (Huntsville, AL) since 2005. Last year, we opened a second center in Washington, DC and in 2010 we’ll expand to the West Coast. We have 50 employees located worldwide.
Our strategy is to operate globally but manage locally. We believe we can deliver the most effective service when we’re located close to our customers. So we’ve established a dynamic infrastructure with anchor operations in Ireland, the UK, the US, China and India. Like our customers, we operate light since we don’t believe in preaching from the Bible of outsourcing unless we’re practicing ourselves. So we exploit advanced database technology and cloud computing to stay nimble and flexible. In this way we can provide the most sophisticated product lifecycle management services for today’s software innovators.
EI: The concept of outsourcing is nothing new. What has changed to provide opportunities for companies like AI?
ROD: That’s true. For more than two decades large, multi-billion-dollar companies have benefited from the efficiencies of outsourcing. It changed the way they do business and made their organizations leaner and more cost efficient. Companies typically outsourced their production to large contract manufacturers in regions with low labor costs like Asia or India. This gave rise to corporations like Sanmina and Flextronics which have done an extraordinary job of producing high-quality products in bulk for US consumer and electronic giants.
Now, however, through AI, smaller companies—especially emerging players and those in the sub-$250M category— have access to similar infrastructure which enables them to exploit the same efficiencies. Unlike their larger counterparts, these players are built from the outset to develop inventive software IP for great products. Maintaining a complex global infrastructure to manage the product lifecycle was never part of their business model. Instead, they’re looking to companies like AI to help drive their product through production and into the hands of the end user.
EI: How does an AI/customer partnership work?
ROD: We work primarily with software solution innovators—especially those developing disruptive applications like smart grid, RIFD technologies, cellular service providers and medical devices. Their competency is software solution innovation. Ours is product lifecycle management. This means choosing the resources around the globe to create the optimal supply chain and orchestrating and managing the global systems and infrastructure to bring the product from “ideation” through to production. This includes: qualifying design partners, prototyping, selecting the right manufacturing partner, certification, and finally, getting the finished product to the end-user on time and within budget.
EI: This must require a rich network of partners.
ROD: Yes, it does. Our commitment to customers is to find the simplest, fastest and most cost-effective route to market for their product and to orchestrate whatever combination of global resources is optimal for the product through its lifecycle. So our success depends on the strength of our global network and the quality of our relationships. We spent a lot of time identifying and forging connections with a vast body of partners around the world.
We also need to have a good understanding of our customers’ businesses and markets. Because when they partner with AI, they naturally expect us to immediately understand their vision, the product and their target market.
EI: What’s your single biggest differentiator?
ROD: It’s our innovative approach to creating individualized supply chains for our customers through leveraging our nimble global model. Our continued and long-term investment in technology empowers our customers with real-time actionable data. They’re pioneering the most inventive and disruptive software technologies; they expect the same tech-savvy attributes from their hardware partners.
Every project engagement yields massive amounts of data. Before outsourcing became a trend, companies drove their own manufacturing operations. They had a single unified view of the entire product life cycle and controlled all of their data. They innovated from the data, manipulating the information to improve products, increase manufacturing efficiencies, reduce costs, etc. With outsourcing, however, they lost control of valuable information like yield and test results. This hindered innovation from within—which became one of the big deficits of the traditional outsource model.
We are setting out to change this. We believe that customers should have total control of the data. It’s their product; the data belongs to them. We know that access to real-time data is a huge innovation enabler so we consider it a value-add for our customers. We invested in Oracle technology that not only provides a new level of transparency, it also enables them to tap into data across the entire value chain—from a design house in Chennai, India to a factory manufacturing the hardware product in Shenzhen, China.
We call this feature “Extended Reach”. It empowers our customers with actionable information and enables them to model for endless scenarios—design, manufacturing or otherwise—in real time.
We don’t maintain large servers in remote locations to store the infinite data. Instead, we turned to the security of Amazon cloud.
EI: What’s the biggest market opportunity for AI in the US?
ROD: Energy is big, especially the smart meter space. Emerging companies in this area are prime candidates to benefit from AI’s offerings. Almost without exception, they’re focused on “ideation” and have little desire to fold product lifecycle management activities into their business model.
Another target for us is the cellular space. There are some interesting macro trends emerging here. When you think cellular, you think large carriers like Verizon and AT&T, and handset manufacturers like Samsung and Nokia. But there are small regional networks emerging that are preparing to take a slice of the market. Their business is selling airtime. They need products to round out their offerings. AI can develop the new product hardware quickly and very cost-effectively for these emerging players.
The medical device market is also big. Here, the macro trends favor companies like AI. Populations are aging, health budgets are maxed out and the traditional method of delivering health services is changing. New technologies are already hitting the market – devices that capture vital data from individuals in their homes, enabling doctors to monitor and treat patients remotely. Once again, software is the engine that drives the innovation, but companies like AI drive and manage the lifecycle of the hardware product.
For more information on Advanced Innovations, visit www.advancedinnovationsinc.com
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