Show Notes
Bringing the BMS Out of the Basement: Exploring the learnd Mobile App
In this episode of Product Snacks, hosts Melissa and Michael discuss learnd’s new mobile app that simplifies accessing Building Management System (BMS) data on the go.
In this episode they cover:
- The technicalities of how data moves from on-site systems to the app
- How the data has been filtered to not overwhelm the users
- Key features like critical alarms and building vitals
- How customers and get a demo to try for themselves
The app aims to make BMS more approachable and demystify building systems for owners, empowering them to manage their buildings effectively.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Product Snacks
00:23 Meet the Hosts
00:31 Overview of learnd’s Mobile App
00:55 Why a Mobile App?
02:09 How Data Moves to the Mobile App
03:14 Key Features of the Mobile App
04:47 Making BMS More Approachable
06:12 Getting the App
06:36 Conclusion and Contact Information
Other topics you want to see? email learndmarketing@learnd.co.uk
Interested in trying the learnd app for yourself?
Transcript
Product Snacks – Ep.2, the learnd app
[00:00:00] Melissa: Because I guess then it makes the BMS more approachable as well. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert in the systems and the technology in order to really understand what’s going on in your building and how it could maybe be fixed or improved.
[00:00:12] Michael: That’s it, our engineers are the experts, you know, leave the hard work to them, and they’ll make it simple for you, basically.
[00:00:18] Melissa: Welcome back to Product Snacks, everyone. I’m your host, Melissa, Head of Marketing here at learnd.
[00:00:29] Michael: And I’m Michael. I’m CTO here at learnd.
[00:00:31] Melissa: And on this week’s episode of Product Snacks, we’re going to be diving into learnd’s mobile app and how it works.
[00:00:37] Michael: We’re going to cover how data moves from on site systems into the app, and how our customers can get set up.
[00:00:43] Melissa: Last episode, we talked about the learnd platform as a whole, but there’s a key part that we want to focus on today, which is the mobile app. A lot of it has to do with bringing the BMS out of your basement, but there’s more nuance to it than that. So Michael, could you tell us a little bit about why we decided on a mobile app for learnd?
[00:01:00] Michael: That’s actually a really hard question because so many companies have a mobile app. Even BNBs have mobile apps these days. So why do you need yet another mobile app for your building? What’s the point of that? Part of it is being able to quickly access data on the go.
[00:01:14] At the moment, if I’m going across a lot of buildings, a lot of sites as part of my job, I have to log into a lot of different systems to get the information I need. And we wanted to take away that pain. We wanted you to be able to get the information at a glance really, really quickly. And the second thing is that we’re used to interacting with our phones to get real time notifications.
[00:01:34] But what if something goes wrong in your building? Do you really want to have to wait until you look into your inbox to find that? No, you don’t. You want to know about that straight away. So that real time access to information.
[00:01:43] Plus having it on the go is why we said we really need to do this in a mobile app.
[00:01:47] Melissa: Yeah. I definitely I tend to have my phone on me more often than not, and it’s those phone notifications that you get rather than checking emails or stuff like that. You get so much spam these days. If you can have a specific notification, it can be a lot easier to make sure that you catch it. but, BMS systems are quite complex. There’s a lot of data points and data going into them. So could you tell us a little bit about how the data gets from the BMS into the mobile app?
[00:02:15] Michael: Sure. So it all starts on the site end of things. If you imagine kind of on the left hand side is where your building is and the right hand side is where you want a mobile app, we start here.
[00:02:25] You might have a BMS that’s on site. It might even be a site PC with the head end. It might be an IP device, and we want to bring data back from that.
[00:02:32] And in some way, we want to display that on the mobile app. So what we do is we install a bit of software called the learnd Agent that could go on the site PC, it can go on a cloud hosted supervisor, and all it does is it talks to those devices over a protocol called BACnet. Brings the data back to our cloud platform where that data is normalized, it’s processed, various rules are applied to look at alarms, for instance.
[00:02:55] And eventually that then makes its way across , to various things such as the mobile app. There’s also an API, so we can also feed that data back into customers own systems if they request it.
[00:03:05] So that in a nutshell is how data gets from an IP device on site all the way into the palm of your hand in the mobile app,
[00:03:12] Melissa: Okay, cool. So with, a mobile app and The amount of information that you want in there, there’s got to be certain features that we pick and choose because you don’t want the whole BMS straight in your phone. That’s way too much information for you to process that sort of an at a glance basis. So, could you tell us a little bit about the key features of the mobile app that the customers really like?
[00:03:34] Michael: Yeah. And I think this goes back to your point about spam as well, because if you have a building with 40, 000 points, the last thing you want to do, is have to filter through 40, 000 pages on a mobile app or receive 40, 000 different notifications every time something happens with one of them. So that filter is a key onboarding process.
[00:03:53] There’s effectively two different things that a customer can do with the app, both, as you say, heavily filtered. One is critical alarms. These aren’t just all your alarms, because alarms on a building can be an absolute mess. But these are the most important alarms. And normally on a site, you might have 10, you might have 20, 50.
[00:04:10] It kind of depends on the size of the site. , you wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of them. Then the second feature is what we’re calling vital points. And that’s really about the most important points on your site at a glance. If you work in cold storage, maybe the most important data point for you is the temperature of your chiller.
[00:04:27] That’s a vital point. If you work as a swimming pool attendant, the most important point for you is that swimming pool’s temperature. So again, that’s the vital point, but you probably don’t care about the 39, 999 other points in the building. So you’re just not going to see those in the mobile app. If you want to see those, we can go see them in the BMS as you usually would.
[00:04:45] Melissa: Okay, cool. So, it kind of sounds like what we’re trying to do is, and you’ve, you heard us say it again and again, but bringing the BMS out of the basement in order to make it more effective for people to understand what are the key points in their building that might need attention, or they need to have that visibility over.
[00:05:06] Michael: it’s not just about bringing out of the basement, but it’s about helping people really get control of it. You get loads of building owners who feel they don’t fully understand how their building works
[00:05:15] so we’re about demystifying it and putting them in control. These are the important things that you have to look at. Look out for these alarms, look out for these points, and as long as those things are doing well, then probably everything else is fine too.
[00:05:26] Melissa: Because I guess then it makes the BMS more approachable as well. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert in the systems and the technology in order to really understand what’s going on in your building and how it could maybe be fixed or improved.
[00:05:38] Michael: That’s it, our engineers are the experts, you know, leave the hard work to them, and they’ll make it simple for you, basically.
[00:05:44] Melissa: It’s really cool to see that we’ve spent the time working with our customers to pull out these different features and allow them to get the most important information. Even if they don’t have any BMS experience, they can understand how to control their systems to the best of their ability and have that visibility. They really are bringing the BMS out of the basement by having that mobile app. but it’s obviously something that is quite a new product for us and not super widely available on the market. So if customers want to get the app or want to see more about it, , where do they do that?
[00:06:18] Michael: Super easy. So we’re on both app stores. So Google Play and also the iOS store. But really, if you want a demo or you just want to see what this thing looks like, best thing to do. Get in touch with learnd Sales at sales@learnd.co.Uk and we’ll be more than happy to give you a demo.
[00:06:34] Melissa: Amazing. well, thanks everyone for tuning in to this week’s product snacks. We hope that you found it valuable learning about the app if you have any other questions about it, reach out to Michael or myself. if you have any other topics that you would like to see, let us know in the comments.
[00:06:53] Michael: And we’ll see you in a couple of weeks.
