Coronavirus Has ‘Expedited’ Need For CBT’s Remote Expert/Connected Worker Solution

‘We had seen rapidly increasing interest in this solution from utility and manufacturing companies prior to coronavirus, but now we are seeing interest across multiple industries,’ says CBT CEO Kelly Ireland. ‘All businesses now are having to figure out a way to support clients in an entirely different manner.’

A breakthrough remote expert/connected worker solution from solution provider CBT is coming to the aid of customers grappling with the changing work requirements sparked by the coronavirus.

“This crisis has expedited the need for our remote expert/connected worker solution,” said CBT founder and CEO Kelly Ireland in an interview with CRN. “This is the result of over two years of industrial IoT (internet of things) solutions development ”

The internet of things solution- which was developed as part of a refinery of the future project with a number of vendors including Hewlett Packard Enterprise – is finding new uses from customers in the midst of the coronavirus, said Ireland.

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“We had seen rapidly increasing interest in this solution from utility and manufacturing companies prior to coronavirus, but now we are seeing interest across multiple industries,” said Ireland. “All businesses now are having to figure out a way to support clients in an entirely different manner.”

Telemedicine is one of the use cases that CBT, headquartered in Orange, Calif., No. 155 on the 2019 CRN SP500, has developed for health care professionals, but the solution has been embraced by a diverse group of clients, said Ireland.

In fact, Ireland said customers have come up with broad uses for the internet of things solution because of the robust capabilities it brings to bear to solve a wide range of remote expert/connected worker issues. “This transcends all industries,” she said.

Key to the adoption of the remote expert/connected worker solution is the return on investment which has amounted to cost savings as much as 75 percent and time savings by 90 percent, said Ireland. “The ROI has been massive- much higher than what we have seen for other solutions,” she said. “The ROI is extremely impactful. It’s going right to the bottom line.”

The CBT remote expert/connected worker solution is packaged solution priced starting at under $5,000 for a single wearable device with up to 10 virtual remote users, said Ireland. “This solution is deployed virtually,” she said. “No one has to come out and install it. We ship equipment and then deploy it virtually. It is set up as a plug and play solution ready to go. So the people using it never have to meet face to face. It is all done virtually.”

CBT has used the remote expert/connected worker device at a Saudi Arabia manufacturing plant, said Ireland. “We implemented the solution and a specialist was able to support the engineer in Saudi Arabia to identify the problem and resolve the issue,” she said.

The remote expert-connected worker “is the culmination of years of work and millions of dollars of investment,” said Ireland. “The knowledge and experience we have gained over that time really makes us experts in this field.”