Pin IoT

From a prototype product to a robust, scalable system

How do you find a missing skip? It might sound like the start of a joke, but for PIN IoT’s clients, that question was anything but funny. After building a prototype digital skip tracking system, PIN IoT needed some support to go from a slow and manual system to a robust, scalable platform. Today, PIN IoT has more than tripled the containers they’re managing — whilst decreasing staffing by 43%m. 

The Story of PIN IoT

On the face of it, the waste collection process is simple: deliver skips to the organisations and individuals that need them, collect and empty them when they're full, and then you get paid. 

But nothing is ever that simple, is it?

Much of the time, the waste operator doesn’t know the location of their skips. Some are only emptied a few times a year, some they lose track of, often they’re not even aware of exactly how many containers they have.

All this makes it near-impossible to for waste operators to understand what sort of return they are getting on each skip or asset. Skips go underused, forgotten, or lost, and revenue inevitably takes a hit.

PIN IoT had identified a big problem for the waste management sector.

And more importantly: they could see the solution. 

PIN IoT built a prototype: adding wireless technologies to every skip (and the trucks that transport them) gives waste management companies a crystal-clear view of exactly where their skips are — and how long they've been there. 

The opportunity: Moving from a manual prototype to a scalable technology platform

The prototype system was solving all kinds of issues for PIN IoT’s clients. They knew how many skips they had, where those skips were, and when they were due to be emptied. 

But that was just the start. 

The initial prototype was doing the job, but it had its issues. Although skip location data was automated (through NFC chips), the system still relied on a lot of manual intervention. It wasn’t robust enough to scale, and turning all that data into real operational insights for clients was a slow and cumbersome process.

 PIN IoT needed to bring in the experts (that’s us).

Why PIN IoT chose F12 Consult

PIN IoT had a successful prototype, and they were ready to scale. 

As a scrappy startup, PIN IoT needed a real partnership with a team who know the sector and the technology inside and out. 

Luckily, the PIN IoT team were already familiar with F12 Consult. They knew we eat, sleep and breathe telematics systems — and that we’re not happy until our customers are happy. 

We initially worked with PIN IoT to enhance their reporting, building powerful business intelligence into the platform, and it was clear that we were the perfect match.

How F12 Consult Responded 

Although they were getting good data on skip locations, it still took a lot of manual work to visualise that data and get any insights from it. 

We wanted to ease that process.

First, we gave users a live view over their operations by building a front-end system in Angular. They can make sense of their data with powerful business intelligence reports and interactive visualisations using Microsoft Power BI. We also added row-level security, so data access can be restricted to certain users.

Finally, PIN IoT’s clients could visualise, analyse, and actually use all that data they’d been collecting on their skips to inform business decisions — and increase revenue. 

We’ve worked alongside PIN IoT ever since, taking the time to understand the business and focusing our development on the key areas for ROI. Together, we’ve built that manual prototype system into a robust technology platform that has enabled the PIN IoT business to scale. We have:

• Adopted a lean, agile methodology that allowed the system to quickly pivot to meet the changing needs of the sector

• Built an intuitive, fault-tolerant message-queue-based system, that’s easy to use across multiple platforms, on a microservices architecture

• Enhanced the system with more intelligent tracking technology to understand the exact location of vehicles and skips

• Built a reporting engine with dual trackers to immediately notify clients of theft

• Integrated with a number of existing waste management systems.

The Results

We have enabled PIN IoT to grow the business, with an intelligent, scalable platform. Their waste operations clients can keep track of every single skip — and see ROI for each asset at a glance. 

The PIN IoT platform can scale up and down as and when needed, and we also found significant savings in ongoing database costs, enabling PIN IoT to 10x the number of assets tracked with no additional spend.