Welcome to the 2nd edition of DEXMA Partner Spotlight! This month we are highlighting Maetrics, an Italian ESCO delivering energy management and building automation solutions.
We spoke with Managing Director Paolo Finotto who is based in Venice (ah, Venice!).
Here are some of the best snippets of our conversation:
First, congratulations on celebrating more than 2 years as part of the DEXMA Partner Community!
What made you decide to become a DEXMA partner in the first place?
Ready-to-use energy management software (EMS) was the question. DEXMA was the answer.
After 6 months of EMS research and tests on both European and American markets, we eventually landed the DEXMA solution with a definite yes. I guess it was just a natural consequence to meet our needs:
- Freedom to integrate different datalogger types, hardware and communication standards
- Compatibility with the most prominent building management system (BMS) on the market
- No conflict of interests with energy meter manufacturers
- Labelling and customisation options
Last but not least, I was quite impressed by the preparation of the sales department.
Tell us, what is a typical day like as the Managing Director of Maetrics?
Surely there is no such thing as a typical day! This is what makes everyday life so special. Stakeholders seems to be mesmerised by dreams of “efficiency”, “smartness” and “green”, whatever they mean. To me and to my staff, it’s about tailoring solutions to improve buildings and infrastructure performances.
The ingredients for great results are cutting-edge technology and creativity, so throughout the whole day, as I play guitar with my oldest son or attend a gymnastics competition with my youngest, my mind wanders between high tech solutions and customer satisfaction.
What are top 3 “pain points” you encounter most often from Maetrics clients? What are their main worries?
- Customer: “Okay, so you’re getting the data from my factory and putting them into a cloud server…are those data secure?” – Truly I can’t understand the reason for this question. Energy data are relevant for consumption analysis, but in most cases, it’s not the most sensitive data. By the way, as soon as I introduce the safety and data security policies of the DEMXA platform, they agree to proceed with the supply process.
- Customers understand that DEXMA Energy Intelligence Platform is very powerful, but they fear they don’t have the skills to analyse the data in order to achieve energy efficiency. This is great for us at Maetrics, because it gives us the chance to provide a consultancy-based business model.
- Most of clients are worried about lock-in. More specifically, they are afraid of losing their data if their relationship with DEXMA is interrupted. In situations like this, we introduce the data export and backup capabilities of the platform.
Where is Maetrics heading this year? What can we expect from you in 2017 in terms of growth goals?
Maetrics experienced an outstanding growth in the last two years, much more than we dared to dream about: our 2016 turnover doubled compared to 2015, and we’re confident we’ll do even better in 2017.
Financial numbers are boring, but they’re the best KPI a managing director can use to prove his progress. You should release a custom DEXMA version to track managing directors 😉
Name some energy innovations at the top of your mind that you see disrupting our industry in 2017. Which are you most excited about, and why?
Before getting to the innovations for the upcoming year, let me tell you that YES, I’m very excited about them! There are many ways to innovate, but at Maetrics, we are bold enough to say that we love doing it by leading. Here are 2 ways we aim to lead in 2017:
- Energy Management through Occupancy Detection. By the end of Q2, Maetrics will release its own IoT platform for RTOM (Real Time Occupancy Monitoring). This platform, capable of monitoring the occupancy status of buildings including desk occupancy, will be able to push and pull data to most BMS on the global market. In addition, data exchange with DEXMA Platform will allow us to develop energy efficiency algorithms to make building behaviour and consumption significantly smarter.
- Industry 4.0. Once again, it’s about linking and sharing data: EMS + BMS + Industrial SCADA, joined together to produce the best energy and process analysis. By the end of 2017 we’ll be able to deliver the first case study in Europe.
What insights can you share on the energy management market and energy efficiency uptake in Italy?
As highlighted in the 2016 annual report of the Italian National Energy Efficiency Agency, the energy management and energy efficiency sectors are growing steadily in the Italian market. With the introduction of subsidies and regulatory requirements related to energy audits for energy-intensive companies, the Italian energy sector has seen an economic boost. In this way, the so-called circular economy has enabled benefits to both costumers and operators such as Energy Service Companies, freelance professionals and technology providers. A purposeful and goal-oriented team pushed us to ride this positive wave of integrated energy efficiency (EMS, BMS and IoT).
Are certain sectors more receptive to energy management in your experience?
Solid expertise gained in recent years combined with innovative thinking oriented to new development opportunities has enabled Maetrics to bring a gust of fresh air into energy-intensive industries, no matter how far their core business might be from the energy sector itself.
From airports to supermarkets, sports centres to banking institutions, steel manufacturers to other big players that are seeing a significant energy bill on their balance sheet, sectors of all kinds run to Maetrics consultants whose main goal is aligning customer satisfaction with green economy development.
How does DEXMA help you connect the dots in your customer success stories?
DEXMA is essential to our solutions and value proposition. If you think about it, it’s quite simple: whatever energy service you need to deliver, DEXMA Platform lays the foundation for it. System integration, performance control and plants refurbishment, just to name a few – all of these processes need to be measured somehow. At the end of the day, regardless how nice or charming you are, your customers want proof of the good job you did. DEXMA is our evidence!
Thank you so much for your time, Paolo! We are so excited to help you bring the best data-driven energy management to your clients in 2017.
You can follow Maetrics on LinkedIn here.
