With a rich background in digital transformation – and inspiration – Augury’s new Chief Operating Officer Roy Eitan came aboard in 2022 to help design, build and implement processes for both scaling the company and supporting our customers. Here, he writes about the factors why he joined the company. “Augury has market fit and truly puts people first. In other words: the sky’s the limit,” says Roy. 

This article was originally published on March 20th 2022.

Why Augury Sparked My Interest

I have two main reasons for joining Augury. At first, when I was researching the company, I discovered a relatively small and young company doing something that made a lot of sense: bringing IoT and AI to the cumbersome, and sometimes outdated, manufacturing processes – processes that are challenging, if not impossible, to digitally transform. In addition, Augury was doing this without changing the entire way we produce. In short, they had a very impressive full-stack approach. 

I wasn’t the only one being impressed… Augury’s client list is a Who’s Who of iconic brands, covering the full spectrum of manufacturing – from Pulp & Paper to Food & Beverage. 

My second ‘big wow’ took place during my interview process when I asked to speak to a customer. I ended up chatting with a VP with 30-odd years of experience at one of the world’s largest manufacturers. He was happy. Very happy. And he said all these wonderful things while being a paying customer. So, I was sold.

Obviously, Augury had found market fit. 

“I heard stories that still bring tears to my eyes. These were stories about how everyone treated each other – stories about people taking care of other people.”

Why I Know I Made the Right Choice

So, I joined. And my mind continues to be blown. I began by having one-on-ones with everyone on my team – currently around 70 people. I asked them all ‘How happy are you with Augury on a scale from 1 to 10?’ 

Only two or three gave a 7 or 8. The rest: 9s, 10s, 11s or 12s. 

When I asked why they were so happy, I heard stories that still bring tears to my eyes. These were stories about how everyone treated each other – stories about people taking care of other people. How staff came together to arrange a generator for someone who lost power after a storm. Or how one person bought another person Thanksgiving dinner because that guy was alone at an out-of-the-way on-site. And these stories came from the receivers not the givers.   

This company obviously has an amazing hiring process – bringing on board people who genuinely care about others. And after getting to know Co-Founders Saar and Gal, along with the rest of the executive team, I know this empathy also comes from the top-down.

Meanwhile, I was also inspired by seeing the impact we bring to our customers’ employees. Within a few weeks of joining Augury, I visited a client’s factory to better understand the value we bring. “Thanks to Augury, I can sleep well,” said the plant manager, “because I know the line will run smoothly at any hour of the day.” 

In other words, Augury puts people first both in our offerings and in the way we grow the team. 

“We still have to do the work: to build the right processes and tools so we can scale – without losing any of this dual magic.”

How I Will Help Augury Moving Forward

So here I am at a company that seems to have a handle on the biggest challenges a company has to figure out: having a customer-centric product market fit, along with the right people to make that happen.  

So, the potential is vast. But we still have to do the work: to build the right processes and tools so we can scale – without losing any of this dual magic. 

My career to this point was formed under the phrases “digital transformation” and “people first” – though these were not always the terms we used. I feel as if all my past work was preparation for my present role at Augury. Of course, I’m here to make a living. But just as with my team, I’m also here to make a difference to peoples’ lives – both my colleagues’ and our customers’.

Let’s get to work.

To learn more about Augury’s full-stack people-first approach that’s transforming manufacturing, get in touch today.

The post Augury’s new COO Roy Eitan: Why I Joined Augury appeared first on Augury.

In his first weeks as Augury COO, Roy Eitan set out to the front-line: to connect with an Augury customer and the Augurians who serve them. In the previous two posts, Roy talked about what he learned on the way. Here the learning curve swoops skyward as he meets those who Augury directly serves.

Finally, we made it to a client manufacturer – in fact one of the largest in the country. On route, I already learned about the caliber of my colleagues. I also realized there are solid benefits to scaling locally as there are in scaling internationally.

But now we had arrived. I could finally spend time at the front-line with the customer to find out what products and processes Augury needs to start executing faster. In short, I was here for actionable insights – not unsimilar to those Augury provides to keep their machines running. 

The Real Manufacturing Deal

As a growth executive who now resides in the rather pristine and deep tech setting of Silicon Valley, it has been a few years since I visited a true industrial-scale operational factory. And this place was huge. It also fulfilled many of the stereotypes of industry: massive machines pumping out miles of product thanks to a whole lotta blue collar work ethic. It also got dusty in places. This was the first time in over two years I had to wear a non-COVID related mask. In short: this factory was the real deal.

Then I got to meet my first hero: a reliability manager who has taken on the challenge of using Augury to bring the next generation AI and analytics to his work environment. I witnessed the difference Augury would make for him once our endpoints were placed. He would no longer have to climb long ladders to tricky places to take readings. These readings would now be automatic and coming in all the time. Moreover, it would no longer be about the descriptive nature of the readings. It would now be about the prescriptive nature of the insights that will empower this reliability manager and his team to prevent issues before they even occur.

I began to wonder if we could also apply more automation in the products and processes we are developing for scaling…

Meanwhile, our Field Team Lead Chris brought my thoughts back down to earth. He had casually touched one of the machines and told the plant manager that it felt a bit warm. And sure enough, it turned out the ventilation was blocked and it was indeed overheating. Thanks to Chris, Augury was already providing value before we had even finished installing our tech. Ah yes, the human touch…

Reliability Manager As Hero 

In the end, Augury will be providing the full stack solution of IoT and AI, backed by our own in-house vibration analysts to help turn the constant stream of data into actionable insights. And there will still be more than enough work for the reliability manager and the rest of his team to do. They’ll be taking on the actual heroic interpretation and activation to save the day from unplanned downtime. And I can very much imagine him happily sharing his newfound knowledge with his colleagues at this factory and with those working at other factories. 

This reliability manager is now heading to the next level of empowerment. Technology like Augury’s will help him gain new skills and likely evolve his career path as he begins to leverage data and insights to drive the business forward. For both him and his company, this was a growth opportunity. 

I realized that as Augury grows, we must never lose touch with providing such growth opportunities. In other words, my own job has also become a growth opportunity. 

Read Part 1: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (1): What I Learned On The Way’.
Read Part 2: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (2): What I Learned At The Crossroads’.

Or to learn more about Augury’s full-stack people-first approach that’s transforming manufacturing, get in touch today.

The post The Road To Customer-Centricity (3): What I Learned When I Got There appeared first on Augury.

In his first weeks as Augury COO, Roy Eitan set out to the front-line: to connect with Augury customers and the Augurians who serve them. Roy learned a lot – even before he got there. At one crossroads it hit him: “Geo-expansion – and scaling in general – begins at home. Sure, let’s go to Australia, but let’s also make sure we’ve already fully covered the regions we’re already in.”

As I covered in previous posts, part of my job as Chief Operating Officer is to empower those on the front-lines so they, in turn, can empower the manufacturing clients we serve. Obviously, I needed to witness first-hand the actual environment of our customers so I would be better equipped to help build the products and processes to help expand and accelerate this empowerment. So, I hit the road. On the way, I was struck by the caliber of people Augury attracts. It made me realize that we have no time to get lazy. 

Stop. Look. Listen.

But first I was distracted by a stop sign. Turning left would take us directly to the client we were set to visit – one of the largest manufacturers in the country. Straight ahead, a sign pointed to a large paper mill – an industry Augury already knows intimately. 

There it hit me: when it comes to geo-expansion we always tend to think in regions: that we have to break into LATAM or APAC. And yes, we are definitely on top of that. But we also have to make sure we get all the low-hanging fruit closer to home.

And indeed, when I returned home a couple of days later, I googled the region we were in and saw a whole rainbow of manufacturers that exactly fit our “ideal customer profile”. It’s obvious it’s much more efficient to have clients clustered together from a sales and servicing perspective. In terms of travel days alone, there would be a massive cumulative benefit. 

But there could also be a massive social benefit – for the machine health ecosystem we are building, and also the surrounding community. 

Why empower one factory when you can empower a whole town of factories?  

Closing The Empowerment Circle

Augury is out to make our customers heroes: to give them the digital tools they need to keep production running smoothly – to save the day. We have an opportunity to empower the people on the factory floor to become heroes by saving the machines from shutting down without being called in the middle of the night. Everyone wins. And so why empower one factory when you can empower a whole town of factories?  

Why not bring all these heroes together for shared training? Maybe they’ll even be inspired to exchange best practices when bumping into each other at their children’s Little League game. Again: everyone wins. 

Already, Augury is all about connecting those in manufacturing to share best practices and help one another be successful.

In other words, my job is to empower my team to empower our clients. So how do we help our clients to empower each other? In my previous roles I was fortunate to sit on the board of Dscoop. This organization consisted of HP Indigo users, who were all committed to helping each other to digitally transform the printing industry. While most were actually competitors, they were all donating their time to help each other. How empowering – and generous – is that?

Upon joining Augury, I learned they have a customer advisory board, which includes executive customers from our customer organizations, as well as an industry advisory board that guides and consults with us. The community team at Augury is also planning to launch a steering committee for corporate maintenance and reliability managers in the coming quarter. Already, Augury is all about connecting those in manufacturing to share best practices and help one another be successful.

In the end, we all want to contribute to the greater good. And now Augury and our customers can do this at scale!

Read the previous: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (1): What I Learned On The Way’.
Read the conclusion: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (3): What I Learned When I Got There’.

Or to learn more about Augury’s full-stack people-first approach that’s transforming manufacturing, get in touch today.

The post The Road To Customer-Centricity (2): What I Learned At The Crossroads  appeared first on Augury.

In his first weeks as Augury COO, Roy Eitan set out to the front-line: to connect with Augury customers and the Augurians who serve them. Roy learned a lot. The first drive alone already offered a whole highway of insights. “I was impressed with the people Augury could attract. They are not only capable,” says Roy. “They are also driven to do good. And they believe machine health is a great means to do that.”

As I covered in previous posts, part of my job as Chief Operating Officer is to empower those on the front-lines so they, in turn, can empower the manufacturing clients we serve. Obviously, I needed to witness first-hand the actual environment of customers so I would be better equipped to help build the products and processes to help expand and accelerate this empowerment. So, I hit the road.  

The Drive To Do Good

The learning curve already shot upward during the ride from the airport to the first facility I was set to visit. Over the two-hour drive I had time to get to know my driving companion Michal Gutelzon, who is our Director of People Ops in the US. 

She told me about her background. I was impressed. She had not always been in HR. After pushing her a bit, I learned she has several law degrees from top schools. And she had previously been an environmental lawyer dealing with sustainability issues at a law firm in Israel. In fact, I knew this firm to be one of the best in the country. But Michal did not mention this since modesty seems to be one of her characteristics. Moreover, a couple of days later, I heard she was a driving force in arranging a generator for a colleague who had been impacted by a recent hurricane – and let me stress that such actions are not standard procedure for HR.

Her story resonated with the one I heard over dinner just a few hours later with our Field Team Lead Chris Morrison – now Training Content Designer. He was responsible for the site preparation. He’s an ex-Marine who later worked for contractors for the US Army. He had spent six years in Afghanistan and two years in Syria. He was obviously about serving causes much bigger than himself. 

Over the next few weeks, as I continued to have my one-on-ones with the entire team, I clearly saw a common thread: shared values. 

The Power of Positive Impact

Meeting and talking with Michal and Chris told me a lot about the secret behind Augury’s amazing culture: A) They are somehow attracted to Augury and make the personal choice to join, B) Augury recruits genuine and genuinely good and committed people, and C) they are given space to expand on their diverse experiences to make an impact and grow. What could be better? 

It all comes down to shared values. It used to be that you’d work for the shareholders of a company, but that’s an old-fashioned view. Work should be seen as a way to have a positive impact on people’s lives – the lives of both your colleagues and your customers. In this way, Augury is less about stopping unplanned downtime and more about giving our customers a good night’s sleep because they know we have their backs in keeping their machines running. 

As COO, it’s my duty to help people on my team to do things bigger than what they can do alone. It’s about serving a greater cause – like Michal did via her law firm and Chris did via the US military. And for them to continually develop their skills, I need to do the same. We all have to keep thinking about how we can have the most impact. This is the only way you can develop ecosystems that create value for the end customer. 

So, I’m feeling the drive. Now it’s time to target the destination. 

Read Part 2: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (2): What I Learned At The Crossroads’.
Read Part 3: ‘The Road To Customer-Centricity (3): What I Learned When I Got There’.

Or to learn more about Augury’s full-stack people-first approach that’s transforming manufacturing, get in touch today.

The post The Road To Customer-Centricity (1): What I Learned On My Way To a Customer appeared first on Augury.

As a startup, Augury excelled in terms of market fit and a people-first mentality. Now as a scale-up undergoing explosive growth, COO Roy Eitan shares his vision on how to build that operational rocket that nurtures this expansion – while not losing any of the magic that makes Augury special.

“You need to stay agile and never lose sight of the customer-as-guiding-light,” says Roy. “And ultimately it comes down to communication.”

Roll Up Your Sleeves. It’s Time to Blast Off To A Whole New Level

In a previous post ‘Why I Joined Augury’, I marvelled at how Augury had already faced down its biggest challenge: having a customer-centric product market fit, along with the right people to take the market by storm. I also noted a new challenge awaits: building the processes and tools to further empower this dual magic as we grow.

This new phase requires recalibrating our people-first principles to make sure these are able to take in even more people and perspectives. It’s also a time to share expectations and vision, while figuring out how we are going to work together. It’s about connecting everyone under the North Star we’re all committed to: the customer. 

Companies often think that transformation is about deploying new tools. Wrong. We first need to ask ourselves: How are we working today, and how do we want to be working in the future? Only then can you answer the question: What are the best tools for getting us there? 

So, at this stage of the game, I’m spending 50% of time on people, 40% on processes and 10% on tools.

Complexity Kills. How Do You Kill Complexity?

For us to fulfil our mission while growing rapidly, we all need to be on the same page. One book The Founder’s Mentality really helped form my thinking around – and the ability to talk about – how to scale innovation through building winning ecosystems. Besides providing the basic concepts and vocabulary around processes to improve agility and customer-centricity in an ever-changing world, this book also explains why companies so often fail in achieving sustainable growth. 

It comes down to the growth paradox: when companies grow, so does the complexity – and complexity kills those bullish startup ways that worked to make the company a success in the first place. Usually, the default path of scaling is that you do it at the expense of your entrepreneurship. And eventually you become a bureaucracy and die.

And that’s NOT part of our plan. 

Fundamentally, it’s about maintaining that snarky startup attitude: mocking the status quo in the name of supporting the undervalued hero – the customer.

Fight The Good Fight

So the question becomes: How do you maintain and expand entrepreneurial spirit – aka ‘The Founder’s Mentality’ – across a company? The book puts forward three successful startup traits that a company should ideally have at every stage of its development: an insurgent mission, an owner mindset and front-line obsession. Each characteristic deserves a full book.

But fundamentally, it’s about maintaining that snarky startup attitude: mocking the status quo in the name of supporting the undervalued hero – the customer. At the same time, you need to rip up any red tape that gets in the way of this support. 

Happily, when I evaluated Augury on its Founder’s Mentality, it scored very high. No surprise. And it also became apparent that our biggest barriers to growth and future success are internal factors not external ones. So, it’s down to us. 

So, what should we do as we seek to increase our execution speed? I will simply advocate the power of talking and listening to our customers and to our front-line teams. Indeed, it’s all about focusing on people.

It’s about looping in the front-line and really understanding their situation, so the rest of the executive team and I can drive the right changes fast.

Looping In the Front-Line 

My first 90 days at Augury were largely defined by many one-on-ones. I found it essential to talk directly with everyone on my team of around 100 people. On one level, it gives them a chance to be heard. And often we can quickly solve any personal challenges and issues they may have. More fundamentally, it’s about looping in the front-line and really understanding their situation, so the rest of the executive team and I can drive the right changes fast.

These one-on-ones have been humbling and exhilarating for me. I learned how diverse the team is – taking in everyone from many veterans who long served causes much greater than themselves, to asylum seekers from Cuba and Venezuela who went through immense challenges to come here. I was also delighted to learn how machine health has become a personal mission for so many, and how happy and empowered people felt working at Augury.  

Company Growth Is People Growth

With a team like this, we can rocket to the stars. And with the insight they provided we are now able to move to execution. And April was indeed a strong execution month. 

• We have established  a logical and growth-ready new service organization based on the insights from team members. 
• Augury’s Biz Ops implemented a new forecasting process. 
• Our IT team consolidated our project management tools so we can all work better together. 
• Our Information Systems team is now ready to launch our new CPQ tool. 
• And the list goes on and on…

All of these strategic initiatives are taking place while the entire team is still making sure we deliver day-in-day-out value to our customers. This means delivering, installing and maintaining brilliant sensors, listening to hundreds of thousands of machines, and deploying the best ever AI engine. As a result, we can provide prescriptive insights, based on years of experience, that save our customers from disasters and enable their customers (you and I) to get the products we need and want.

And while we are building these infrastructures today to allow the company to grow in the future, we are also building them to stretch our capabilities as individuals. In this way, we can each continue to grow as people. And in this way, the circle continues to be round.

Read Roy’s previous post: ‘Why I Joined Augury’.

The post Listen: This Is How You Maintain the Magic While Scaling Big-Time appeared first on Augury.