Welcome to the 1st edition of the DEXMA Partner Spotlight! This month we are highlighting Iskra, an intelligent industrial solutions provider based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
We spoke with Product Manager Tim Kodek during his visit to our Barcelona office. Here are some of the best snippets of our conversation:
Tim, great that Iskra joined our community of partners earlier last year!
What made you decide to become a DEXMA partner?
At Iskra we were searching for a proven EMS solution on the market since we decided not to develop it on our own. During this process we analysed several EMS providers worldwide and eventually concluded that DEXMA is the best choice.
The top 3 reasons why we chose DEXMA over other providers are:
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DEXMA was already an established provider of the solution, and the company has already scaled past the initial start-up phase when we made the decision last December
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The company was well prepared for the partnership package we were after. DEXMA offered excellent and well defined partner packages at very reasonable prices.
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DEXMA Platform has many global references, was technically unquestionable and therefore fully comparable with the other solutions we found on the market.
What makes you happiest as an Iskra product manager?
What makes me happiest is my very interactive everyday work experience. Being a product manager at Iskra means that I need to develop and bring new software related system product solutions to the market.
Such work requires a great deal of technical expertise in the process of defining and specifying new product requirements. During this stage the market needs to be thoroughly analysed which also includes a lot of traveling and interactions with other companies.
What is the most exciting part of this role?
After this initial research phase, making the product a reality requires a lot of constructive cooperation with co-workers from various departments – primarily software engineers, testing engineers plus marketing and sales departments.
Such work for me is rewarding at the end when I see my products materialise and when they start bringing benefits to the company.
What are top 3 “pain points” you hear most often from Iskra clients?
I would say our clients have 3 main worries:
- How to save money related to energy consumption in a reliable way. Normally customers would all like some kind of savings guarantee which can be risky for any energy management provider.
- How to hire a reliable partner with the capability to deliver and maintain the system later on
- How to secure their data and have control over it.
Where can we expect from Iskra in 2017?
2016 was the year Iskra became an established energy management provider and all efforts were oriented toward this goal. For 2017 we intend to close at least 5 energy management related deals that will include the DEXMA solution.
What’s the big innovation coming to the energy management industry in 2017?
The big innovation for 2017 will be IoT systems for energy that can not only monitor data acquired by sensors (e.g. electricity metering, temperature measurement, etc.) but also have the means to control some selected loads from the cloud.
EMS systems will hence need to provide controlling mechanisms through which certain loads will be manipulated. This will provide the conditions for demand side management and to transform building management systems (BMS) into modules within existing EMS cloud based solutions.
What insights can you share on energy management and energy efficiency uptake in your local market?
In Slovenia, the energy management market is on the rise as we see more and more companies investing into energy savings. The awareness on this issue has grown significantly within the past few years and combined with increasingly numerous government incentives driving energy efficiency measures.
We are also observing a greater need for ISO 50001 compliance. The reason for this is that many Slovenian companies are export-oriented and primarily trade with Germany and other western European countries where this compliance and awareness is also happening and in some cases even requested.
How do regulations affect the energy management market in Slovenia? What will we see in terms of regulatory policy in the coming years?
Government regulations as well as incentives are actually a direct result of EU policy in this field. I think we will be seeing more and more such measures in the coming years resulting in more investment into energy management related projects.
Thank you so much for your time, Tim! We are so excited to help you bring the best data-driven energy management to your clients in 2017.
You can follow Iskra on Twitter @Iskra_Europe and on LinkedIn here.
