'Partner Spotlight Of The Month' - An Interview With Waizu

Welcome to the fifth of our ‘Partner Spotlight of the Month’ interviews!

In the past, we have brought you customer, vendor and staff interviews, so now we thought it would be interesting to see what our partners have to say about us!

This month we spoke with Adrian Lawson, Managing Director at Waizu, to find out his thoughts on all things Dakota!

1. How long have you been in your current role at Waizu?

In early 2020 during lockdown, I found myself with an opportunity to create something from scratch during a time when much of the world was hiding away. I really needed a nine-month window to get my ideas in line, so in a strange way the timing was perfect and we launched Waizu, our SaaS business, at the start of 2021 off the back of winning the UK’s biggest and best potential start-up competition.

2. Can you tell us more about Waizu?

I have worked in Auto-ID for 20 years, representing vendors as well as large managed service providers. During that time, just about every customer I sat in front of talked about the challenges of managing shared mobile devices on a day-to-day basis. Although they all had leading solutions from the likes of Zebra Technologies or Honeywell, along with software tools from the likes of InTune or SOTI, they still had big challenges including missing devices, issuing out and receiving back shared devices, along with trying to get higher levels of user accountability to look after them. I therefore knew that there was a gap in the market to solve this massive problem. Waizu provides Device Finder Software to dramatically reduce missing devices, as well as automating the check in and check out process, common with shared rugged Android devices, with the Virtual Smart Cabinet Solution. As we are a huge differentiator for those that sell hardware, we have found that our products sell very well via leading solution providers such as Dakota. In around 18 months we have sold 10,000 licenses and will double that this year. It’s a very exciting time for us right now to partner with Dakota.

3. What does your role within Waizu involve?

It is a very diverse role being a start-up business owner. I have to keep a handle on every part of the business, so it is essential to have a broad understanding of each business element. I am fortunate to have experience as a CEO, Sales Director and Marketing Director so that has been a massive help. What I’ve found to be even more rewarding is how the team around me learns, develops and grows. I am very lucky to have some exceptional people on the team who constantly step up and take more and more off my plate.  I’m also extremely pleased to have my previous boss from Honeywell working with us who I have a huge amount of respect for.

4. How long have you known the team at Dakota?

Dakota is very well known in the industry as a leading enterprise mobility solution provider and as such I have always been keen to partner with them. They have a great account base and an ever-expanding team who are all looking for ways to differentiate themselves against their competition.

5. What is Dakota like to interact with on a business basis?

We know several of the sales team within Dakota and the relationship is building well between both teams. We also have great exec engagement as we have worked with Phil and Keith in the past and that has helped to get our partner agreement and plan in place.

Dakota also has a great marketing engine so when it came to promoting Waizu and helping to get our messaging out, they were right on point.

6. What attributes does Waizu require when seeking strategic partnerships with businesses such as Dakota?

Waizu has an extremely tight-knit channel policy and works hard to limit this to key partners who bring value. We need solution providers who know how to sell on value and how to position a return on investment. It is surprising how many resellers out there don’t know how to do this, and we learnt early on that those partners won’t be successful with Waizu.

7. What benefits do you think Dakota contributes to Waizu’s overall solution offering?

It is a great time to introduce Waizu at the point of rolling out new hardware and as such working with a large provider of Zebra and Honeywell devices is a perfect fit.

Alongside this we need salespeople who understand solution selling and how Waizu can transform customers’ operations. As Dakota has excellent relationships with its customers, the teams can influence both IT and Operations. This is critical for Waizu as our solution specifically helps operational teams who are often starved of tools to help them manage shared rugged mobile devices and printers on a day-to-day basis.

8. What are Dakota’s specific USPs?

Having specialist teams for both Healthcare and Supply Chain means that Dakota can introduce experts that fully understand the customers’ environments. This is quite unique in the market as many providers of rugged devices sell to anyone.  Being focused on customer service and specific solutions means that the team at Dakota is able to change the conversation when engaged with customers from a variety of industry sectors and address their very unique requirements and challenges. This fits well with Waizu as missing devices is always a topic that needs addressing. One of Dakota’s competitors had said that they don’t want to sell Waizu as they like selling more devices to their customers who keep losing them, so it is no surprise that Waizu doesn’t work with that particular reseller. A number of their customers have already moved to more proactive solution providers such as Dakota and we see this trend continuing.

9. And finally, what do you hope the future holds for Waizu’s relationship with Dakota?

I have always been excited about the potential to innovate with our software and I can see great potential with Dakota to continue this as we solve more and more issues that their customers are experiencing in terms of managing shared mobile devices and printers.

As Waizu is a software-only business, we also need a very capable partner to pass hardware opportunities to and we know that in doing this with Dakota there are strong capabilities there to manage and win these opportunities – all of which include Waizu.

For more information about Waizu visit: getwaizu.com