We have a remarkable number of happy long-term customers. Most stay for the same reason they signed up: being free of unplanned downtime. But there’s more, according to James Newman, Augury’s Head of Product and Portfolio Marketing. “It’s about reducing risk, elevating reliability, and continuing to fight the good fight for continual improvement.”
At Augury, we’re incredibly proud that our customer retention rate is currently 97.6%. We’re perhaps even prouder that our net dollar retention (NDR) rate is 130% – which means not only do people stay with Augury, but they spend an average of 130% more with Augury every year as they expand with us.
In other words, unlike Hotel California, it’s not that you can’t ever leave, it’s that you won’t ever want to. And there’s one big reason for this: value, which begins with the elimination of downtime.
In most cases, we eliminate unplanned downtime in one or two years. And once you’ve achieved that, you’d never dream of returning to how it was before. However, you can begin to imagine what comes next.
Yes, It’s The Reliable AI
We track this progress on our platform, repeatedly showing how sites and organizations eliminate the endless firefighting around unplanned downtime. When we began, this was the big problem of manufacturing we wanted to solve. And its solution brought people to Augury.
But now that the problem is solved, why not eliminate Augury?
It’s because of what Augury does for a company’s workforce, processes, and operations. Customer after customer and plant person after plant person says, “I can’t imagine working without Augury. Every day, I walk in and decide what I should focus on based on what Augury tells me. It alerts me to a problem. It also tells me what’s not a problem.”
Solving The Problems That Need To Be Solved When They Need To Be Solved
Hence, the sustaining value is the assurance that Augury will tell you how to spend your time on what needs your time the most. No one can imagine going back to that level of uncertainty they had before – which would probably be heightened now in an age of continued labor and expertise shortages. After all, companies are all about mitigating risk. Why would you put your plant at risk?
So, Augury offers reliability and risk reduction. And this used to be about having less unplanned downtime. Now, it’s about the reliability of having your people do the right things at the right time.
Certainly, Our People Are Also Valued
It might be pushing to say we get paid because of our nice and supportive people, but our people are certainly valued! Just like with tech, it’s about having a relationship that you can grow, trust and count on.
“She is a machine whisperer who can tell what’s wrong with our equipment from hundreds of miles away – while my technicians and I think everything is perfect.”
Recently, a plant manager from a food and drink manufacturer reached out to say how happy he was with our Team Lead for Reliability Success. He admitted he was initially highly skeptical of our solution and was “just waiting for Augury to be wrong.” But in the end, he was proven wrong. Our lead pushed him to act on our alerts, and she was proven right twice in a short period.
1) “She called out bearing wear, and we reluctantly pulled the motor and sent it to a shop to inspect it. We gave them zero instructions on what to look for. The shop identified that very same bearing as problematic.”
2) “Later, she pushed for weeks on an alignment issue, and during a stoppage, the maintenance manager pulled the guards and checked it with a straight edge. He confirmed Augury’s alert and made the repair.”
The manager said, “She is a machine whisperer who can tell what’s wrong with our equipment from hundreds of miles away – while my technicians and I think everything is perfect.”
Stories like this motivate many of our customers to say our people are just as important as our technology. I’d say it’s more about the combined relationship between our tech, our people, and those on your floor.
But There’s More! How About Taking Continuous Improvement Beyond Assets? How About Optimizing Your Planned Maintenance Scheduling?
There often comes a point around continuous improvement when something seems as good as it can get – for instance, when you have put all your rotating machines into a real Machine Health Solution. In other words, the firefighting work is done. But actually, that moment really represents the beginning of your continuous improvement journey. In other words, it’s now time to focus your efforts on where they will have more impact.
If it doesn’t break, try it across several machines. And once you’re sure it’s not an outlier, start looking holistically across your enterprise. How much are you saving now?
For instance, it might be time to change your planned maintenance schedule. Since the Augury system tells you when something doesn’t need to be fixed, why would you do maintenance on it every three months? Perhaps you can take that from a three-month cycle to a five-month or maybe even a 10-month cycle.
If you do push an asset to the breaking point, Augury’s AI will warn you to jump in. So why not let that machine go an extra two months? If it doesn’t break, try it across several machines. And once you’re sure it’s not an outlier, start looking holistically across your enterprise. How much are you saving now?
When you continually push the envelope in minimizing unnecessary maintenance, you might come across exceptions: instead of doing your maintenance every three months, you might look at the data and decide to do it every three weeks. But that’s okay. You will not only still save money overall, but you’ll also have better-prepared machines overall.
It also puts a lot of power in the hands of Machine Health customers to not just stop failure but to make everything better.
And Why Not Extend The Life Of Your Assets?
Once you’ve optimized the operation and maintenance of your machines and they’re all running in the green all the time, you can follow the same principles to extend asset life. After all, if their performance isn’t degrading, why replace them? Yes, your OEM might say you should replace them every 12 years. But the data might tell you you can quickly push it to 15 years. Why not defer that cost for three years and make some free profit off that machine in that time?
Yes, this is very much a long-term play. However, with continual improvement now possible and trustable, it’s a play that’s actually executable. It also puts a lot of power in the hands of Machine Health customers to not just stop failure but to make everything better. And that power might go a long way in explaining why we have so many long-term customers.
Learn more, reach out. Or maybe you want to read this first: ‘How Do You Measure Success Once You Beat Unplanned Downtime?’
