The transcript below is available for those who prefer to read along. Please be aware that it may contain minor errors.

Grace:
If you could just say your name, your title, and what company you’re with.

Matt Wise:
This is Matt Wise. I’m the CEO of E Tech Group.

Grace:
What are you most excited about for the future when it comes to system integration?

Matt Wise:
I mean, system integration, it’s really exciting right now because of the point we are at in the industry. Historically, system integrators were brought in at the tail end of automation projects. What we’re seeing is kind of a sea [of] change in the industry where system integrators are being brought in earlier in the process, and this is allowing us to look more holistically at automation projects. It’s allowing us to add a lot more value to our partners. So, truly an exciting time to be a system integrator.

Grace:
Absolutely. You kind of already hit this on the head, but just curious, what other ways are you seeing the industry start to transform?

Matt Wise:
Well, some of the biggest transformations have to do with where we can apply automation. You look back 20 years, automation’s been around for a long time, mostly focused in aerospace and in automotive where we had higher price points. And then as you look through the rest of the industrial automation arena, what we find are spots, and I would deem them specific executions of automation as opposed to full line automation. Now we’re looking at full line automation, not just in automotive but in food and bev, CPG [consumer packaged goods], literally anything that is produced, we have the potential to cost efficiently automate the entire process. So, that’s hugely exciting.

Grace:
What challenges are you anticipating from now until about 2025, or maybe even beyond?

Matt Wise:
Well, let’s see. In the short term, 2025 being only a year away, I think some of the big challenges are just how are our clients interacting with system integrators? How are they looking more holistically? This takes time to change. 

For instance, the historical way: an individual or a company would work with system integrators as an individual facility might have two or three system integrators, therefore, someone who has 30 different facilities may have 60 to 90 different system integrators working with them. What we’re seeing more mature companies do is start to trim that number down and really start to lean on one partner to be their main partner, to coordinate activities, to add value across all facilities. So in the short term, how companies manage that, how they go from decentralized to centralized management of controls is a challenge. 

I think in the longer term, when we look out five years from now, this is looking at how do we start to move down this process of fully automated lines? How do we do it effectively and efficiently? How do we make the right decisions? It’s a very complex environment, and all we’re seeing is more and more proliferation of technology, whether it be from AI or vision systems, or even just packaging systems. So you need a partner to help you manage that. And as a company or a client, you need to have a good strategy for how you’re going to migrate and automate because you can’t do it all at once. You can’t just shut down a factory and change everything at one time. You got to have a strategy of what I’m going to change in the first quarter, what I’m going to change in the first year, what am I’m going to change in the second year, et cetera. 

And don’t get me started on all the things around cybersecurity and hardening of facilities. That’s also a huge challenge for many of our clients.

Grace:
Yes, it really is. So, how are you planning to use marketing as a part of your strategy to help kind of get the word out that you can bring value to clients in these ways?

Matt Wise:
Yes, so we’ve used marketing and we’re going to see a lot more emphasis on content creation because we view marketing as an education tool. The more our clients know, the easier it is for them to plan. And quite frankly, the more business that comes to us, the less they know, the more they stay working in their historical methods, which aren’t the best, aren’t the best for their company and their products.

Grace:
So, we got a couple of questions about this at the CSIA conference this year. Smaller businesses or just businesses in general that were interested in learning about what it takes to…. Once you have acquired another business, how do you successfully merge that into your brand? And I think E Tech has had a lot of success doing that. So to you, what is the key for getting the most benefits and that going well in general?

Matt Wise:
Right. So we do have a fair amount of experience. I think we’ve, over the years, acquired about seven companies now. And each of those brands, we’ve moved into one brand, the parent brand, the E Tech Group. And I think the things to be cautious of are, one, there’s brand value in all these brands we buy. So you need to figure out a method and a process to migrate that brand equity over to the E Tech group. 

But in the end, our strong feeling is we want to concentrate all of our marketing efforts behind one name, so that name can be known in the marketplace. We are in a tremendously fragmented market. There are thousands of system integrators standing out and standing for something within that very diverse marketplace is difficult. So we have been careful to one, as we acquire companies, not let that brand equity disappear, but then in view and take all of that goodwill from those clients and try to surround E Tech with that.

Grace:
Yes, absolutely. I’m glad you talked about the brand of value that is truly so important. What other values have you seen for E Tech in acquiring groups? I think the most recent one was Automation Group.

Matt Wise:
Yes. With each acquisition, we not only increase our footprint, which is of great value to our clients who want us to serve their entire fleet of facilities as opposed to just a particular geography, but we always pick up new technology. So, there are experts in each of these companies and a skill set that we may not have had before. Additionally, we bring on new technologies. They may have an expertise in a particular software or hardware that we didn’t historically. 

And as we add more and more of these companies to our portfolio, the benefits to our clients are regardless of what platform they are, what geography they’re in. We have an expert that we can bring to bear to solve their problem. And we have local people who can immediately jump into their facilities and help them out.

Grace:
That’s awesome. Is there anything that you’d like to add that I haven’t asked you? 

Matt Wise:
Probably getting back to where you started and where we see the industry going. I can’t emphasize enough the changes that are occurring in manufacturing and how difficult it is for each of these companies to manage this. Because we think about us, we have 600 engineers who all day long worry about controls and the information system behind all of the machines. Your typical facility has 2, 3, 4, 5 automation engineers. So they have to think about all the different things, all the different practices that are going on while they run their facility. It’s just too much. So what we see going forward is companies having much greater reliance on system integrators, but that also puts a burden on us. 

It makes us responsible for staying on the cutting edge of all the different technologies, making sure we know what’s working well, what’s not working well, and that we have a company that can share that information. Too many system integrators I run into have knowledge in Toledo, and the Toledo team knows what’s going on. That has zero impact on the Tallahassee team. What we have tried to build and what we encourage other system integrators to build is information systems so that when the Toledo team learns something, the Tallahassee team can leverage that and bring that to the benefit of their clients also. So, we have spent a lot of time and effort doing that, and we think it’s going to reap great rewards to our clients over the next couple of years, but [it’s an] exciting time to be a system integrator. Huge challenges in front of us, huge benefits that we can bring to our clients, and we’re excited to do that.

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