What is Sigfox ?
We usually describe Sigfox as a radio solution aimed at giving a voice to the physical world thanks to a dedicated network. It provides a global, inexpensive, reliable, and low power solution to connect sensors and devices which will be able to last years without changing the battery. While being heavily used for industrial use cases like tracking and predictive maintenance, it is also used by some consumer devices.
How does it work ?
Through local operators, we deploy a public network (our antennas are usually on high points like towers or buildings) on which everybody can connect its very own IoT devices. The network is global and collaborative, meaning you can cross borders without any issue, this will still work.
You might not have followed but we had our yearly event in September, and a lot of announcements were made during the first edition. While most of the people were blown away by the connected envelope (well I admit it's quite amazing actually), some other news was in fact "almost" as important for the future of Sigfox.
The launch of two platforms, build.sigfox.com and buy.sigfox.com, were actually the official birth of a movement the company started a couple of years ago, when we decided to change the way customers would interact and start with the technology.
The following experience is an only small part of what the company is doing, but it can give you a glimpse of what Sigfox is trying to build and accomplish in the ecosystem.
In the ecosystem, Sigfox is then considered as a technology provider: in order to integrate our service, we need to persuade customers to add physical components to their products and build around it. Our customers are both hardware manufacturers, and end customers using our services. Our job is actually similar to companies providing SDKs and APIs to developers and manufacturers, but for the hardware world, and it means a lot as developing hardware requires a bit more support and knowledge.
While selecting the right technology for your mobile or desktop application is engaging, you will still be able to change your decision afterward and the impact would be minimal. Switching SMS providers from Twilio to another is tough, but still manageable.
Choosing a technology for a physical product is very different, as you will be linked to it for the next 18 months for the design, and more for the distribution.
Example of a quite small module you can integrate to your hardware to use Sigfox in a product.
In order to facilitate the choice for our customers and onboard even more partners at the same time, our job was quite clear: create a perfect customer journey while integrating our technology. Originally being a network operator structured to address a very limited number of customers, we knew the path would be very long. We needed to transform ourselves to look a bit more like Amazon and a bit less like regular telcos, which is not something easy.
2 years ago, the Sigfox customer journey was quite terrible. It actually looked a bit like this :
We also had a lot of very clear pain points:
- Lack of information online (documentation, learning materials, etc.)
- Expensive development kits
- Complex support
- Contacting somebody at Sigfox was very hard
- Buying connectivity was a long and messy process
- Lead times for modules was around 4 weeks
- and others I'm forgetting
This was a big problem, as we were losing a lot of leads just because of the integration complexity. We then decided to tackle all these issues one by one, with the help of a lot of amazing teams. It's actually very easy to build something complex for your customers, but it's very complex to build something easy.
- Lack of information online (documentation, learning materials, etc.)-> Launched Build.sigfox.com + an online academy for learning materials
- Expensive and complex development kits -> Worked with devkit providers to get it down to 30€, sent at home in 2 days, and that you can activate in 2 mins from everywhere
- Complex support-> Our support team opened support.sigfox.com + ask.sigfox.com for everybody to find answers quickly + get direct contacts within Sigfox
- Buying your first connectivity was a long and messy process-> We launched buy.sigfox.com to buy connectivity online + activate devkit
- Lead times for modules samples was around 4 weeks-> We Worked with distributors to get it down to 2 days
Thanks to all these efforts, as of today, the theoretical Sigfox technical journey looks a bit more like this :
Of course, this only showcases the Sigfox related topics. It is still far from being perfect as there are way too many platforms, which can be confusing for users, and we also need to address a lot more issues (coverage options, etc.) but it's already a great achievement from what we knew in the past.
Thanks to this work, we also saw a huge improvement in the time to market process for our customers, giving them way more flexibility to quickly answer the market demand.
Sigfox is one of the easiest connectivity technology to work with, we need the customer experience to be as simple as the technology itself.
Another big problem is that the market is a bit slower than everybody expected, and I think our whole industry (Sigfox included) has a part of the responsibility.
To elaborate I'll take an example I know very well: The mobile application business.
Even if very different (B2B vs B2C, etc.), Sigfox has more in common with application stores than we think. By adding some extra pieces to your solution (a modem and an antenna instead of a software SDK), you can reach a whole new market of customers (people covered by the network). There is no need to go through local manufacturers or operators anymore, the whole market is available through a one-stop shop, and it's a game changer. If we want to grow as fast as the application business grew, we have some lessons to take from them.
Living it from the inside, I actually believe the whole market grew up very quickly because everybody could create, develop and sell applications to a critical mass of customers very quickly. From the smallest startup in Finland to the biggest video game companies in the US, everybody had (almost) the same chance to make something. All you needed was a $99 Apple dev account, a MacBook and some imagination.
This huge competition leads to the ecosystem as we know it today, creating billion dollar companies in few years, and changing forever the way we interact with everything.
I actually believe Sigfox can play this "enabler" role in the IoT as we know it, by giving a chance to small guys to create something amazing.
How many crappy games were developed to get to something as well thought as Clash Of clans ?
Unfortunately today, it is far from being perfect in the IoT world. We've seen a lot of innovation coming from small players even in the biggest industries, but it's still a very painful process for small companies to build a complete solution.
To tackle this issue, we first need to understand why this limitation even exists, and I think the main reason comes from the support and knowledge needed to launch a product in IoT today. The whole hardware industry is tailored to answer industrial customers and not really optimized for the smaller ones. Connectivity providers, Semiconductors, distributors are all struggling to adapt to the new kind of demand IoT is generating today.
We (Sigfox & our partners) were not different and had the same problem. We were not sized to answer to everybody in the same way and smaller players would get frustrated not to have their chance to compete, which was also a big issue for our own growth.
It is a way bigger problem than most people think. We are constantly inventing a new market, so if we want to find the good use cases of tomorrow we also have to allow the bad ones to be built quickly.
To fix a part of that and extend our ecosystem, we needed to come up with a strategy to allow everybody to build something on their own, without needing to contact Sigfox at all.
While working with big partners is very attractive, the smaller players also bring a lot of good things. By being more flexible, targeting niche and new markets, trying crazy stuff, etc., they are the real backbone of our ecosystem. We actually already have numerous examples of huge business deals signed because of the heavy work from one of our small partners. When one of our small partners grow, we all win.
We actually came up with a strategy to be able to address automatically the "long tail" players and get them the same treatment than everybody, with few targets in mind :
- Everybody should access the same material to get the same chance
- The Sigfox door should be always open to everybody
- Customers should be able to develop a full product, without contacting Sigfox except buying connectivity
- KPIs and Data-driven program to get continuous feedback on the market direction
This strategy would allow us (Sigfox corp & our local Sigfox operators) to focus better on the ones which needed the biggest support for larger commercial opportunities, while still getting leads from smaller players automatically.
It was also an economic necessity: with a low average revenue per user (ARPU) compared to other technologies, we needed to make sure the acquisition cost to get new device makers and customers were as low as possible.
While it can seem quite clear, it is actually a bigger task than we think. How to funnel all these potential leads, amongst only a few of them are interesting, accelerate them, and transform them into good partners or customers while not hiring dozens of people?
From the beginning, we knew the ideal thing to do was something like build.sigfox.com : a platform to guide device makers in their journey, leading them to the right content at the right moment, and providing them with all the knowledge they would need to go through this, completely automatically. The main problem was we didn't have either the resource or the time to develop it at the time, so we needed to do something quickly.
After analyzing the market, we actually decided to create a Startup program whose goal was clear from the beginning: create an open door to Sigfox for every device maker who can't get local support, and guide them through the whole process, automatically.
Again, as we didn't really have the resource to build a whole process, I ended up developing the whole thing by myself using automation tools like Zapier and other connected tools like Typeform and Pipedrive. (By the way, If somebody at Zapier is reading this, I genuinely admire your service)
How would it work ?
- People would register on makers.sigfox.com/startups through a typeform system, linked to the Pipedrive CRM.
- The registration would automatically generate a validation email + some API calls to create accounts on our video Academy to give learning materials to everybody who needs it
- Once registered, a manual verification of the submissions was done, and the good ones would go to next steps.
- If verified, each company is contacted trough personal email (mine) to ensure the customer has everything needed to go further, and redirect to the right local contact if needed.
- A 30 min technical introduction was booked with the customer interested to know more. ( huge time investment, but necessary to know which customers are the most interesting ones)
- Proper follow-up was done. Either redirect to the good local operator, or help them directly to get started.
- And… this is it. All the rest was support done by hand for all these guys, in an opportunistic manner.
[
Basically me & our Sigfox hero @Celine Gaboreau @Work
In exactly one year, we received around 700 requests to build something with Sigfox from Startups, SMBs, Design houses… coming from 60 different countries. (NB: This figure doesn't represent the whole Sigfox pipe as many of our local operators created similar programs in their own countries, which is really cool)
Below the data we gathered during the 4 first months of the program. ( July - October 2016)
Of course, we couldn't follow up on everything for numerous reasons (coverage, regulation, etc.), but a big part of this was a potentially interesting business. Being able to redirect (to local partners), track, qualify, automate, and follow up on partners was key. The most important part is that people were not stuck anymore, at least they had a door opened to our ecosystem.
We're still not Google or Amazon so few people were a bit disappointed, but the vast majority found what they were looking for, and this was the initial target.
Having optimized the global customer journey in parallel, we also saw a great improvement in the time to market for our customers, going from approximately 18 months between an idea and the product to around 12 months today.
More Surprisingly, we also now have a lot of customers choosing the Sigfox technology for the support and the experience they get compared to other technologies, which is quite crazy when we compare the number of people involved between these giants and us! (we still manage the whole thing with 2 people)
Luckily, the new build.sigfox.com is actually aimed to replacing this program by providing everything needed, so hopefully, I won't have to take somebody on Skype at 9 pm to talk radio transceivers availability in Brazil anymore.
A lot of work was achieved, but I believe there's way more coming.
Build.sigfox.com will now allow people to build devices almost automatically, while buy.sigfox.com gives the opportunity to buy connectivity completely on its own, which is quite a revolution in this ecosystem. Thanks to this heavy work, we will be able to focus more on the next steps and propose something different to our customers.
We also have to continue on our path to improve the service and make our customer's life easier and easier. There is still a very long road ahead if we want to look like a SaaS player and deliver the Network as a Service promise, but we definitely look way more like Amazon today than 2 years ago. The pipeline is growing stronger every day, and I'm still amazed the number of incredible use cases allowed by the technology. This new path of innovation where every single and simple thing will be connected will clearly change the way we interact with everything, and it's quite amazing to be part of it.
From the industry perspective, I actually believe we're living one of the most exciting times in our generation. IoT and hardware are still at their very beginning, and so many things still need to be created.
If we look at the software industry, a lot of effort was made to abstract the lower level layers to the mass developers. We almost have as many SDKs, APIs, libraries and tools than application themselves. While being quite a mess sometimes, it clearly helped a lot of people to focus on what they knew to do best, develop beautiful and useful applications, without having to worry about all the little details. All these tools have also allowed to dramatically lowered the development cost, giving the opportunity to take more risks to develop new services. Today with Unity, even a designer can almost develop a whole game by himself without needing much code knowledge, which is an amazing opportunity for creativity.
Monument Valley, one of the most beautiful games ever created with Unity
Can a designer develop an IoT product today by himself by simply clicking on an application? Not really, as there is still a lot of electronics, mechanics, and tooling involved. However, it's getting better and better every day.
We're actually not the only ones fighting this war, some players are heavily working to make it simpler as well. People like Arduino, Adafruit, Seedstudio, Hax, Bolt, etc., are paving the way to shorten the timeframe between an idea and a product, which will clearly help and grow the market as well.
3D printing was also a big revolution, as today you can get your very own casing printed in a couple of days delivered at home. Platforms like thingtype.com, allowing you to develop electronic designs completely automatically by just selecting the sensors you need is also another major step for flexibility. I'm sure we'll see a lot more of these tools growing quickly, allowing companies to develop products faster and cheaper to support a demand always evolving. How long before we see new online service allowing you to completely personalize your hardware depending on your use case?
(image of the Nike ID service, which allows users to personalize their products completely)
The lowering of the development cost will permit the development of use cases and business models which were not even remotely possible before, opening completely new markets to be in. It's quite exciting to be part of it, and almost feels being in the web industry in the 2000s.
I also want to say that I feel quite privileged to be part of the Sigfox adventure. I didn't think I would have the chance to work with all the brilliant people I met here, and I'm learning every day by their side. All the work described here wouldn't have been achieved without having such great people. Creating a completely new market while transforming a whole industry is kind of a big work, and it actually takes a lot of crazy people to tackle it.
About the author : Anthony Charbonnier, Head of scale adoption & startup programs
After more than 5 years at Intel handling the developer relations for southern Europe as an application engineer (amongst other things), I joined Sigfox to be "Startup" guy. My job is to help as many small companies as possible to start with Sigfox, and to prepare the company to do so as well.
As a very lazy guy, my ultimate goal is actually not having a job anymore: all our customers should be able to build a Sigfox product without any help. Working very closely with the famous @Nicolas Lesconnec & @Cedric Giorgi since a very long time, we now created a whole "Adoption" team dedicated to that topic.