Customer Success Director Points to Top Benefits of Canopy Platform

Banyan Hills Technologies’ director of customer success, Nathan Rowe, has had a front row seat for several years in viewing how businesses are taking advantage of advances in remote device management.

- Banyan Hills Technologies Director of Customer Success Nathan Rowe says businesses managing large fleets of unattended devices of all types, or those businesses looking to scale their device fleet, are taking advantage of the latest adaptable features on Canopy’s platform to create tailored solutions for unique business needs. We sat down with Nathan to get his take on how customers are taking advantage of Canopy’s latest evolution.

Q: How has the Canopy platform evolved?
A: Canopy has evolved quite a bit. One of the biggest highlights for customers is the flexibility Canopy offers. Companies are able to adapt the platform to meet their business needs and specific processes and gain loads of functionality they did not have before. By definition, Canopy is an enterprise connectivity platform that allows businesses to centrally monitor, manage and control connected devices at scale and monitor the overall health of devices. To facilitate that connectivity with remote devices, the Leaf software agent is installed in hardware and then Leaf connects to Canopy in the cloud. That opens the door wide for a host of adaptable and automated uses.

Q: What is the strength of Canopy over competitors?
A: One of our strongest assets is the team who supports our product. All of the key members of the Banyan team who are actively engaged with customers on the sales cycle or support or development or on account management have history and experience with doing deployments and the onboarding of automations and ticketing for tens and hundreds and thousands of remote devices. There are only so many of these experienced people around, so to have so many working at Banyan is unique.

We just added two more additions to our team and, collectively, our team has years of experience doing large-scale deployments for Fortune 500 companies to small and medium-sized businesses. When you have individuals backing a product that is already differentiated from a technology standpoint, it allows you to be very successful with tailored solutions for our customer segments.

Q: Which businesses are having the most success with Canopy?
A: We have customers that range in size from small to Fortune 500. We have a great opportunity with small to medium-sized businesses that are growing. We are an ideal partner when businesses reach a size where manual processes and spreadsheets are no longer enough and there is enough device critical mass to make an automated solution critical. We can easily segue into large customers as well. We have relationships with large companies and understand all the legalities and politics of Fortune 500 corporations. The most immediate benefit is not just having a tool and a solution, but a proactive, experienced support team.

Q: Can you give us a real-time example of how Canopy solved a problem for a customer?
A: One of our customers came to us having done large deployments across multiple devices, but they wanted to do much larger deployments with tens of thousands of devices and were looking for a platform that was flexible. Some of our customers come to us needing to generalize deployments as much as possible. They may need to ship the device to its long-term home and then install solutions for a variety of uses. Some devices may be used as a point of sale or for digital signage or for a host of other things. Our customers want to be able to configure devices in multiple ways and Canopy provides that flexibility.

Q: What are common challenges that Canopy helps customers overcome?
A: Often companies can find themselves with devices installed for one purpose. Across 10,000-plus devices it can be difficult to manage the life cycle of each device, having to remember what each device does and how it is intended to work. Companies need to move fast if they want to scale. We have done an amazing job providing a platform that allows companies to make decisions about a device and change decisions. They can deliver new instructions to a device, or devices, and have that new functionality take effect immediately.

We also hear from clients that they don’t have enough resources to keep all their devices running smoothly, ensuring uptime. Most are reactive and a lot of that is because the systems they have are not scalable. They take too much individual attention and are not automated. Canopy can be configured to send proactive maintenance alerts that identify problems before they become tickets requiring a truck roll.

Q: Which industries can Canopy best help?
A: There are so many industries where remote device monitoring and management is needed, and we can serve them. From EV charging stations to MSPs, connected kitchens, building security and surveillance, medical and vet clinics, storage facilities and more. We are also particularly positioned to help with unattended retail devices and kiosks such as self-checkout or menu-ordering devices. We have partnered with kiosk manufacturers and those are fun because we have a great onboarding playbook that can help them get up and running quickly and be able to court new business prospects without feeling like they lack advanced technology to place their kiosks.

Q: What industry trends get you excited?
A: One of the things we are tracking is edge computing. Years ago, you used to have to deal with the cost of connectivity, but then advances like 5G came along and network connections and smart devices became easier to deploy. Companies now want devices that are not dependent. We are just an enabler of our customers to deliver updates to devices that allow them to maintain continuous delivery and real-time monitoring and keep doing what they are doing as a company. We are doing our own edge computing now and taking things from workflows and automations and building out device-side automations. This allows for further customization.

Ready to see what Canopy can do for your business? Contact us today for a free demo.