We tested Hologram in one of our problematic gap zones where other providers failed, and their devices worked flawlessly.
Imagine if one company could help you lower your environmental footprint, increase productivity, and decrease costs in your manufacturing line. This story is about a company revolutionizing materials handling equipment fleets with Cellular IoT to achieve exactly that.
UgoWork™ was founded in 2015 to help organizations improve their operational efficiency and sustainability by integrating energy savings into their material handling activities. With the UgoWork Lithium batteries plus UgoPilot™, their proprietary Battery and Energy Intelligence Platform, thousands of electric forklifts achieve the highest levels of availability at the lowest cost for their customers.
From Day 1, UgoWork knew that Cellular IoT was essential to combat issues with Wi-Fi connectivity inside the warehouse and manufacturing floors. To get their pilot quickly off the ground, they started with a local provider in Canada. As they expanded, they started having significant connectivity, coverage, and cost issues. “We quickly added several additional connectivity providers to get better geographical coverage,” noted Jean-François Marchand, Marketing and Customer Success Director at UgoWork. “Unfortunately, multiple connectivity providers translated into our operations and support teams wasting time going into each of their apps to track the location and status of units.” Plus, it created headaches for the accounting team to manage contracts with multiple providers and track their data usage.
With their success being hampered by this unintended complexity, they knew they needed a better solution. But, moving to a new connectivity provider felt risky, and they wanted to have a high level of confidence before the transition.“We tested Hologram in one of our problematic gap zones where other providers failed, and their devices worked flawlessly,” added Marchand. “We knew we could trust our consolidation on the reliability and availability of the Hologram platform.”
The UgoWork support and contract teams immediately saw the difference. With the Hologram Dashboard, the teams had a single view into each connected forklift battery’s location, status, data consumption, and more. Plus, now the development teams could focus on building additional services for customers, not worrying about connectivity issues that impeded the flow of critical data.
“Hologram delivers connectivity that is essential for every facet of our business — from maximizing the uptime of our client’s industrial trucks through accurate and real-time tracking of energy usage where we derive our revenue.”
– Jean-François Marchand, Marketing and Customer Success Director, UgoWork
UgoWork’s commitment to customers is more than fast battery charging. They help to ensure the uptime of their client’s forklift fleet by tracking the assets, gleaning insights into optimal equipment charging, and proactively queuing assets for maintenance. Their customer’s entire production depends on that forklift being charged and ready for material handling.
All of these services rely on real-time data, something their competitors aren’t able to offer. “We’re as much in the data business as the battery business. Any disruption in our services can have devastating financial consequences for our customers,” noted Marchand. “We trust Hologram to deliver the high levels of availability and reliability for the data that powers our real-time services.”
With data from the Hologram Cellular IoT SIMs at the heart of their business, UgoWork leverages it across their internal operations to deliver the best services to their customers.
Hologram Cellular IoT SIMs deliver the data for UgoWork to help their customers optimize their operations, decrease costs, and save energy.
The Lithium battery market has grown consistently over the last 5 years and is accounting for roughly 10% of the global battery market share. Experts predict that will increase to 50% by 2030, putting UgoWork in an ideal position for expansion globally. Finding more ways to use data from the Hologram SIMs is key to that growth.
Next up for their customers is peak shaving – enabling batteries to proactively adapt to grid pricing. With a peak shaving model, batteries charge quickly while plant operations are underway to stay in service and then charge slowly overnight to save on energy costs. “Hologram delivers the real-time data we need to lower our customers' energy costs, decrease oversized fleets, and maximize their operational uptime.”
Congrats UgoWork for the amazing service you created with Hologram SIMs! We’re excited to be your connectivity partner as you help customers accelerate their sustainability goals. We can’t wait to see the amazing things we can do together for your customers.
