The mission of Augmentir is “to empower workers to do their best work”. A member of Sixth Sense’s second cohort, it is the world’s leading connected worker solution provider.
We sat down with the company’s Vice President of Strategic Operations, Chris Kuntz, to hear more about the landmark partnership the company formed off the back of the Sixth Sense programme with ETQ – a part of Hexagon and leader in enterprise quality management solutions.
Read on to find out more about how this partnership came about, as well as what the future holds for the industry-leading duo as they join forces and enter the market together, with their unified ETQ Reliance Connected Worker solution.
Sixth Sense: Could you tell us more about your partnership with ETQ? How does it work?
Chris Kuntz: ETQ is a world leader in enterprise quality management software, and we believe this partnership will significantly enhance quality, safety, and productivity within the manufacturing sector.
The challenge with enterprise quality management today is that is it too often disconnected from the actual manufacturing execution on the frontline – the place where companies have the most touchpoints and the largest impact on the final product. These frontline workers are essentially human sensors on the shop floor – they witness quality and safety issue during the flow of work, ye the process for resolving these issues is very manual and time contusing due to the disconnected nature of frontline work today. This situation is further challenged by the fact that manufacturing is facing critical skilled labor shortages, as well as hiring and retention issues.
This is where connected worker solutions come in. AI-based connected worker solutions like Augmentir help bridge the gap between the frontline and enterprise quality management and provide tools to help workers become more connected into quality processes, resulting in faster issue resolution and improved troubleshooting, while at the same time empowering them to perform optimally.
Together with ETQ, we are essentially providing a closed-loop quality management ecosystem that enables manufacturers to break down silos and automate valuable factory-floor data to mitigate the impact of poor quality, while driving continuous improvement.
Sixth Sense: Why is this partnership beneficial for Augmentir?
CK: This partnership is beneficial because it allows us to address some of the most pressing issues in manufacturing related to the frontline workforce, while at the same time offer a solution that advances digitalisation in manufacturing.
Our solution now provides a holistic connected quality solution that combines the power of data-driven actions and AI-powered insights to help bring frontline workers into the quality value chain and give them tools and knowledge they need to optimize safety and quality.
This partnership, and the launch of the ETQ Reliance Connected Worker solution has the potential to provide manufacturing organizations to deploy next generation quality management solutions that leverage the latest in frontline operations technology.
Sixth Sense: What do you hope to come from this partnership with ETQ?
CK: The business relationship with ETQ is immensely rewarding for us from a revenue market share standpoint – it allows us to bring additional value to manufacturing companies looking to digitise and optimize their frontline operations with connected quality solutions.
With ETQ, we are now in our go-to-market motion, there’s a lot of collaboration happening from both an innovation and integration standpoint, and that will continue. We have also identified new integration features which we can add on, due to ETQ’s modular capabilities, rolling out into different use cases.
We’ve also continued to stay in touch with Hexagon, gaining additional exposure to other areas within the business, and opening us up to the broader portfolio of Hexagon solutions.
Sixth Sense: Could you expand on how this partnership with ETQ came about as well as the role the Sixth Sense programme played in forming it?
CK: As a start-up, you’re sometimes cautious about participating activities that are time consuming or might distract from the business. But what was beautiful about the Sixth Sense programme, was that the more time we invested into being successful within it, the more we uncovered opportunities like partnering with ETQ.
We wanted to prove the integration with ETQ as our demo for the programme – which was relatively straightforward. But as we got deeper into it, we sat down with ETQ and very quickly identified additional use cases where our two products were complimentary and can add additional value for manufacturing customers, realising there was a bigger partnership here.
We spent the next two or three months after the programme formalising our partnership, but more than this – it’s a joint go-to-market strategy.
Sixth Sense: How did the Sixth Sense programme help fuel Augmentir’s development as a company?
CK: Being able to participate in the Sixth Sense programme was very rewarding for us. The programme was very well run and organised, providing a spectrum of support and valuable resources. It exposed us to the different aspects of Hexagon, helping us to understand its market drivers, and was helpful in facilitating a deeper introduction to ETQ.”
Getting up on stage and giving a product demonstration was also very valuable in honing our pitch. Likewise, learning more about Hexagon’s portfolio and where Augmentir fits into the company’s overall strategy helped us understand, shape, and formalise our partnership strategy. ETQ is one example of that strategy, but we’re also replicating that same model across other manufacturing areas.
Regardless of who actually won the competition, I think there were many winners in our cohort. We think we certainly won – our partnership with ETQ is a testament to that.
Sixth Sense: What is your vision for Augmentir’s future? What role will your collaboration with ETQ play in this?
CK: We’ve had a tremendous year of growth, and we see significant growth for us again in the year ahead.
Our partnership with ETQ is just getting started and will continue to blossom. We will also establish other key collaborations to continue the momentum, and we’re excited to think that today’s market sees us as the leader in connected worker software solutions, from both a customer and analyst standpoint.