Today I’m joined by Samsara, a company that is on a mission to improve the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of the operations that power the global economy.
Samsara is the pioneer of the Connected Operations® Platform, which enables organizations that depend on physical operations to harness IoT data to develop actionable insights and improve their operations.
Today Kiren Sekar, Chief Product Officer at Samsara, joins me to talk all about Samsara and what they do; unifying operations to achieve greater visibility and collaboration; cutting cost through improved utilization; and leveraging technology to change your relationship with people.
Guest bio:
Kiren Sekar leads Samsara’s global product and engineering organizations as Chief Product Officer. Kiren and his team are harnessing trillions of data points and new AI technology to make customers operations safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. Kiren led the Product organization since founding, and also served as Samsara’s Chief Strategy Officer between July 2022 and February 2024. Prior to joining Samsara, Kiren was VP of Marketing at Meraki (now part of Cisco Systems), where he helped grow the business from $5M to over $500M in annual revenue. Prior to that, Kiren held software engineering and management positions at various startups and at Apple, and holds patents for network protocol design from his work there. Kiren has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
[3.19] An introduction to Kiren, his background, and why supply chain is a big opportunity to make an impact.
“What’s always motivated me is solving hard technical problems that have big impact in the world.”
[07.16] How the Samsara founding teams’ vision, that sensors and software could impact the world of physical operations at a global scale, led them to establish Meraki and ultimately Samsara.
[11.23] An overview of Samsara, and how they helped DHL cut asset-related costs by approximately 49% and put a clear focus on driver safety.
“We saw, across the industry, that keeping folks safe out on the road was becoming a bigger and bigger challenge, and the cost of accidents was getting higher and higher.”
[15.40] The role of habits in change management, and why leading consumer apps have played a key role in Samsara’s product design.
“Strava, Duolingo… There’s really effective ways these apps can change habits. Gamification, leaderboards, friendly competition, rewards… We’ve built those types of experiences into our product.”
[18.44] The ideal customer for Samsara.
[20.59] From safety to efficiency, the common challenges Samsara customers are looking to solve, and why digitization is their critical opportunity.
“We now have a digitally native set of leaders at many of these companies. They have all the cutting edge technology in their personal life… and they want to be at the forefront.”
[25.36] What the discovery, solution development, onboarding and integration process looks like with Samsara, and why being flexible and fast-to-value is key.
[29.51] How the Samsara platform allows teams to run all operations from one place, and the big benefits to unification.
“It starts with unified data. Historically there were technologies for driver safety, GPS tracking, compliance, digital documents – and they were all siloed… You end up with fragmentation and complexity. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t scale.”
“Collaboration is a fundamentally human thing. But it’s really inhibited when each person has a different view of the world.”
[34.33] How Samsara Intelligence leverages AI to drive impact for customers.
[38.55] A case study exploring how Samsara helped Mohawk improve driver safety and reduce miles driven, and how the technology changed their relationship with drivers.
“It translates to bottom line savings and increases driver engagement, which turns into lower turnover and vacancies.”
[40.50] The future for Samsara, and why data is helping them build solutions that were previously impossible.
“There are still so many unsolved problems in the world of operations. And we’re still in the early days of how technology can improve safety, efficiency and sustainability.”
RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED:
Head over to Samsara’s website now to find out more and discover how they could help you too. You can also connect with Samsara and keep up to date with the latest over on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X (Twitter), or you can connect with Kiren on LinkedIn.
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