Boosting the Bottom Line: 3 Ways Data Can Drive Profit for Manufacturers with Mike Wertheim

In this episode, we talk with Mike Wertheim from Hayward Industries. Mike shares how Hayward is using data to boost the company's bottom line and outlines his team's top priorities for 2020.
3:41: 3 Ways Data Can Drive Profits
Mike: Data is important to everybody. For Hayward, we are a manufacturing company and it comes down to the bottom line. So, I'll give you 3 ideas of some things that make data very important to [us].

We are a big company in a mature market. The way to grow in that market is through acquisition. When you acquire a company and there's a different set of data, there's a lot of problems.
The other thing is we have traditionally been a B2B company. And we're trying to compete in this age of online purchasing and there are so many channels that people buy their products from. To do that, we've really got to go deeper and reach out to the actual consumers when possible.
The last thing is technology. IoT is a big thing, but we're trying to do more than just make the next great product. We're trying to gather the data that's going to help us make business decisions, grow business, and use those smart devices for our business intelligence.

6:13: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Master Data Management
Mike: I've been with the company 5 years and [during that time] we have acquired 5 different companies. That gives us a major focus on things like master data management, where we've got to all be talking the same language.

9:47: B2B2C
Mike: We're so blind when it comes to selling our products through a distribution channel. So now in conjunction with our distributors, we are actually collecting data about the products that they sell to their customers. That data is so valuable. It's probably the number one thing that our executives are looking for.
15:16: How IoT is Driving Service and Product Development
Mike: We have a chemical monitoring system, a floating connected device. The consumers have an app where they can see what's going on and they can share that information with servicers. So servicers can see... "oh, you're having problems. Maybe I should come out and help you."
The other thing we do is we sell chemicals in what you would think of as pods, like Tide pods. They're color-coded. So your connected device tells you, "Oh, you've got an issue. Please drop in 2 blue, 3 green and a red into your pool." So, we're connecting on the service side, and we're connecting on the consumable side.
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