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26 WWW.CFOSTUDIO.COM 1st QUARTER 2015 Interview by Andrew Zezas Q A N ed Mavrommatis, chief financial officer of I.D. Systems, Inc., has experience with public and growth companies in a broad range of high- technology industries including wireless, RFID, enterprise mobility, analytics, and business intelligence. His focuses include strategic planning, operational improvements, investor relations, mergers and acquisitions, and bank relations. Since 1999, Mr. Mavrommatis has served as CFO of I.D. Systems, a provider of wireless solutions for securing, tracking, and managing enterprise assets like containers, trailers, and forklifts. Andrew Zezas, publisher of CFO Studio magazine and host of CFO Studio On-Camera, recently sat down with Mr. Mavrommatis to discuss how I.D. Systems’ offerings can improve efficiency and ROI, and how demand has rapidly grown in the online age. n (ANDREWZEZAS) We’re here to talk about a really cool topic: the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine technology. For those who aren’t familiar with those terms, what do those terms encompass? NEDMAVROMMATIS: Well Andy, the Internet of Things or machine-to-machine technology allows any asset to be connected to the Internet. Once assets get connected, they can speak to each other and send information back to the Internet. As a user, you know where those assets are, who is using the assets, the percentage of time they’re being used, and how they are being used, so you can use all that information to employ your assets more effectively. For example, you can install a device on a forklift truck. You’re able to control access to this piece of equipment to ensure that only authorized and trained operators can get on this piece of equipment. You can also collect information: when this vehicle is in motion or when it’s pulling, when it’s lifting. Then you can use that information to maintain this piece of equipment more effectively. If there’s a problemwith the equipment, without any human intervention, the equipment can communicate with maintenance and they can schedule the vehicle to come in for preventive maintenance. n My mind is racing with possibilities. I’m sure this distills down into a lot of benefits, but I’ve got to believe that as this has become a huge growth industry, it also creates an explosion of data. MAVROMMATIS: It’s all about the data. I think the winners in the space are the companies that are going to focus on the data and the analytics. If you can imagine Walmart, for example, has 137 distribution centers. You can take all the data provided by their assets and give them analytics on how productive they are in each and every one of their distribution centers. You can also feed in data from the rest of the industry so they can compare where they stand among their peers. n Thinking as a CFO, I think I hear a positive impact on billing, budgeting, planning? MAVROMMATIS: It changes the whole budgeting process. You can have situations where you need to buy certain assets for some of your facilities or certain of your regions, but now you can have data, and you can see maybe in other facilities or in other regions those assets are being underutilized. So why buy new assets when you can transfer them? From a billing standpoint, you can use this technology to accurately charge your customers automatically. It takes away all the manual effort and all the human intervention. This would make the CFO’s life a lot easier, and at the end of the day what this technology is going to do is it’s going to help increase the enterprise value of the organization, which is very important for a chief financial officer. C Harnessing the Internet of Things Watch the Entire Interview on www.cfostudio.com/NedMavrommatis Andrew Zezas and Ned Mavrommatis