Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to AppCudo's new podcast, a series where we talk to players up and down the connected device supply chain. My name is Allison Mitchell and I'm the VP of Sustainability at App Kudo and the host of App Kudos podcast series covering industry trends, customer journeys and sustainability topics, and more. If you have topics of interest or guests you want to hear from, shoot me an email@alison mitchellbcudo.com Today we are going to learn about one customer's success with enterprise device recovery, an effort that is truly challenging for IT and mobility teams with a global and hybrid workforce. To tell us about this customer, a major airline based in the U.S. ben Jones joins us. Ben is executive Vice president of Enterprise Take Back and formerly the CEO of Mobile Resell, which which Abcuto acquired in 2024. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast today, Ben.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Well, Ben, let's start by having you give us an overview of the customer we're going to be discussing today. A major airline with a fleet of mobile devices that are actually in constant motion.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So they're one of the top three airlines in the world, I believe. They have about 6,800 flights daily. They go to 350 destinations across 48 countries, over 100,000 employees, with I think around 50% of those employees being pilots and flight attendants. And this airline's really been at the forefront of technology investments for their employees, specifically leveraging modern tools just to improve operational efficiency and, you know, for their own internal employees, improving the overall travel experience for their pilots and flight attendants, but also for their, you know, their passengers as well. They were actually one of the first airlines, I think in 2013 to use iPads as EFBs. A lot of acronyms out there, but EFBs stand for electronic Flight Bags. The goal of this was really to transition away from lugging around a suitcase full of paper that they were using for pre flight training and really shift to a digital approach. You know, those traditional flight bags were pretty heavy. I think those things weighed up to about 35 pounds versus an iPad weighing about a pound. So the airline estimated that they were saving about 1.2 million in fuel cost just from the shift from, you know, paper approach to an iPad. We've, I think they were about also the third airline that we've worked with and they came from a referral from another major airline. So we've had a ton of success with this airline. We've been fortunate enough to work with them since 2019.
Now we've done over two pilot refreshes. We're coming up on our third this year and we've done one flight attendant refresh as well. So, ton of success, a ton of innovation happening within this airline and we're proud to partner with them.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Wow, that's a pretty unique customer with a lot of devices up in the air. So what was the situation for this customer in terms of how they were managing the life cycle of their deployed mobile assets in the field before they started working with us?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah, prior to working with us, I would say that they were doing many things right as IT related to just proper lifecycle management of these devices. They were using a managed mobility service provider. This company handled things from kitting and provisioning of These iPads to 24, 7 end user support, break fix and many other things. The airline had also invested in mobile device management platform, also known as unified endpoint management, across all of their pilot and flight attendant devices and also their under their wing devices as well. But they did have a ton of different challenges as IT related to their IT asset disposition practices. And there's a few things I'll specifically call out. I think they had the wrong commercial model tied to this. So working with their ITAD vendors, they were using an antiquated model where there wasn't a ton of transparency around the fees, the residual value from these devices and so forth. There was also a gap in experience that they were facing. Right. As all of these companies, broadly speaking, not just this airline, are going through this digital transformation. I would say that 75% roughly of that device life cycle, they were adding value to the stakeholders. And the stakeholders could be the IT admins that were managing that process, or the end users such as the pilot or the flight attendants. But that remaining 25% specific to the its disposition side was extremely painstaking for them. And why it was painstaking, you had four chain of custody visibility. A lot of that correlated to the fact that previous ITS Disposition vendors did not have a platform for them to have the visibility to centralize the data, to normalize the data and really house that in one location where you're receiving data from multiple different vendors in their ecosystem. This won't come as a surprise to anyone here as well that there was a ton of manual spreadsheets. Right, Just manual processes being managed by spreadsheets. All of that is prone to error. It's difficult to keep updated on a consistent basis. And I would say those are probably the key elements that made it very difficult for them to track compliance, success and Even environmental impact, which I know we'll talk about later.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that does sound pretty familiar. Lack of visibility and manual processes is as often the starting point for customers, especially on the recover side. So that was a lot to help them address. What was the primary focus? Where did you start with this airline?
[00:06:14] Speaker A: We first started by introducing a new commercial model, which in essence was a glorified consignment model where we bundled our Recover platform and services as one fee. Now, consignment models aren't new to our industry. We were, I guess where our approach was different was we were able to place a lot of focus around the headaches and solving those through our platform and services and really balancing the risk in a model that made sense between us and the airline. So the goal in that was to align our incentives directly to their success. And obviously we're a big believer in these, in these models where both parties are aligned on that front. Next, we looked at how we could plug in our Recover platform to their ecosystem of vendors. So I just mentioned that normalizing data and plugging into a company's ecosystem is a challenging effort, generally speaking, but we want to plug in. And we made a focused effort to plug in to these vendors so that we could properly support their iPads and iPhones, which truly allowed us to unify this data and the benefits that they got from that, which allowed us to properly associate devices to their user. And that allowed us to track these assets from a compliance standpoint, meaning that we knew who returned their iPads or iPhones at the end of life and who were laggards, and I'll use that word because that's what they, you know, called their users that took a long time to execute. But the laggards that weren't returning their devices on time. The centralized approach and plugging into the ecosystem also allowed us to create automated returns because that we had visibility into their entire ecosystem of what was happening. From the deployment of new devices to the retirement. We were able to trigger certain returns based on activities that were happening in their environment. So, for example, if a pilot were to get a new device, that would then trigger him or her to have specific return options based on their profile. For example, this user would be allowed to purchase their device as just one example of some of the configurations that we enabled and tied to that employee purchase. They were the second customer we launched this solution with. This gave their users the option to purchase their device from the airline in a secure manner, which, while also getting a better deal than what they would from Amazon, renewed Or ebay. And we were the first to bring this to market and then also do this at that sort of scale as well.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: That sounds like a lot. And surely in that process you uncovered some challenges or some surprises came up. What did you discover along the way?
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it's realistic to have a device refresh and collection effort at that scale without running into challenges. But that being said, you know, I think the teams at this airline, they're great people, they're extremely collaborative, and again, you're going to run into hiccups even with the proper tools and tailored services. But it boils down to how each party approaches those solutions. I can tell you there was one big surprise. And you know, we still have a laugh about this when we talk to leaders over at this team. But I clearly remember the EFB director mentioned when we were talking about bringing employee purchase to their environment, he had thought that they may have 1 or 2%, maybe up to 5% at most of their pilots actually purchase their devices from them. We ended up having over 40% of those pilots purchase their device. And this was in the first go around. During the second refresh, it was closer to 50%. So I think that was, you know, definitely one surprise. But just overall, you know, a lot of learning lessons. We actually first started working with this airline when we were a team of 10 people. So really just appreciative of their collaborative effort and finding a solution, you know, that worked for them and we were able to execute on it.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard a lot from discussions about this customer, the collaborative nature of the relationship and how everyone took a problem solving approach to it whenever issues arose. And I think that that always leads to the best outcome. So in this case, how did you know you had delivered a successful solution for this customer? How did you know that you had made this customer happy?
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Now I would say, as the old saying goes, right, the proof is in the pudding. I think. All in all, we recovered to date over 110,000 devices from their end users with around a 97% asset recovery rate, which is far above industry standards and something that both teams are extremely proud of. We have returned over $3 million in residual value from their old devices without it costing a dime of out of pocket cost to utilize our solution. Right. All of our costs are baked in to the value that we're recovering for their devices. Another thing which is a big testament to what we've accomplished is the fact that they've been a great referral partner. I mentioned earlier where we actually had received a referral into this airline from another airline, but they also became a referral partner to us, had referred us to additional airlines and to also a very large OEM that we've partnered with stemming from that introduction. So very appreciative and had it have had a lot of successes in this relationship.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: It sounds like the learnings that were created had multiple benefits there. And when you get a referral from one satisfied customer to a peer who they, you know, I'm sure airlines have peer communications and collaborations as is necessary in any industry. That means more from one peer to another than any type of referral probably could.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: So that's exactly right. Exactly right. And it's, you know, it's a very tight knit industry. Right. I think you look at the airline industry and from news headlines you see that it's ultra competitive when it comes to airfare cost and so forth. But when you look at these smaller pockets of the groups that actually power these airlines, they're extremely collaborative amongst each other and there's a lot of industry events and you know, we've, we've been able and fortunate enough to attend these events and, and sit in a room or you know, sit at the bar and have a drink with these groups and talk about, you know, the challenges they're facing and, and again, how Appkudo can help them out.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: So did any of the things that we delivered for this particular customer have a broader impact like for those other customers or just in the evolution of our product offerings as the company matured?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%, without a doubt. I think two specific things would be this employee purchase that we've talked about today. And also this hub tracking model. So, you know, they have a hybrid environment. You have people going into bases, you have pilots and flight attendants that are always in the on the move. So really tailoring both this employee purchase solution that we have, but also this hub tracking model to ensure that it delivers, you know, the results that they wanted. And we've been able to take those to other airlines, but to other companies in different industries that have again, a hybrid workforce, but also have a portion of their workforce that is centralized and that does go to an office or a centralized location. So we've been able to incorporate a few things there, you know, across our customer base. But they're definitely the dream customer when it comes to bouncing ideas and you know, gaining their feedback. This allowed us to, you know, again for some real life planning and being able to expand those solutions across our customer base. You know, they've we've, we've had a lot of success in offering those solutions to other partners as well.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: So that's awesome. So what's been the most rewarding part of working with this customer?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: We talked about the success, you know, directly of the solution we were offering. But one thing I'm extremely proud of, and it actually continues to grow today, is that we offered and brought to them a donation program and really collaborated with them on a partner where they had vested interest to see their success, you know, specifically a nonprofit. And we chose Aerospace center of Excellence to donate iPads to. So this airline donated the iPads app, Kudo donated our services and we've been able to see the impact. So Aerospace center of Excellence helps underprivileged kids find a path in aerospace as a career. So we've been on site, there's a large event that the Aerospace center of Excellence, it's called sun and Fun Event down in Florida. We've actually got to see these iPads in use and in a classroom setting to see these, you know, how these students are interacting, what they're doing with the iPads, the different courses that are being taught and so forth. So very rewarding from that aspect. And again, it's, you know, just previously talking about things that we're taking other customers, it really helped us build a donation model out that we are taking again to other airlines, but also to other customers so that we can have a broader impact outside of just the reuse of these devices, but from a social perspective, ensuring that we're giving back to the communities that these companies reside in. So very proud of that had a lot of impact and continue to see the impact that we're having as our partnership expands.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: And speaking of the impact that we're able to have with this customer, the sustainability team has been able to support this airline in a few different ways, including, you know, providing the avoided environmental impact metrics in the platform that they can view in real time and they can query that information however suits their needs, whether it's on a time bound way or in a project based way. And then we've also had the opportunity to support their internal education efforts, both for a specific internal team for the mobility managers to kind of take what the mobility managers for the pilots and the flight attendant groups have done and share that within the company to other mobility management teams and then also for just broader employee education. So speaking with an employee resource group and helping them understand the impact of the secondary device market when it comes to, you know, these, these devices that they get issued as employees and the impact that can have when they are compliant. Right. With those requests to turn the device back in and how that avoids e waste and protects the environment. So it's been a very collaborative customer in that way too. Right. They, they've open to receiving that information and using that and leveraging it to sort of support their efforts internally. So I very much appreciated that collaborative and benefited from that collaborative approach as well.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: It's been awesome to see them lean into that element and it's something that we hope to have other customers lean in like that. But you know, such to your point, Allison. Right. Such a reuse and circularity story around these assets. All of these companies and specific airlines, they're investing in this consumer grade technology and this consumer grade technology has another life right there. There's another home for this device. And keeping these devices out of landfills and back in another consumer or company's hands for the next journey is extremely important. So, you know, you've done some great work with them and just thankful and grateful for them to, to lean into that.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm, I'm very excited too about their utilization of the employee purchase because from a sustainability side that is, that's like the tightest, you know, circularity loop to keep the device like right where it is. Whether that's through sort of a traditional processing model or remote wipe to process the data off of the device, it still minimizes that environmental impact even further than the broader secondary market as the second life for it. So very excited to see that continue to grow and surpass their expectations.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, same. Same here.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: So what is on the horizon for this customer? What are you looking forward to in the future with them?
[00:19:08] Speaker A: A lot of different things. So you know, we've been partnered with them for six years at this point. There is an upcoming pilot refresh this year. There's another upcoming flight attendant refresh in early 2026. So definitely excited just to continue our partnership with them. Another thing tied to App Kudo really being the fabric of this industry. We have a lot of these ITAD or its disposition partners that are part of this App Kudo network, meaning that we can really optimized that entire reverse logistics flow, meaning that we can reduce costs based on optimized returns and intelligent routing to the nearest facility. That means that there's less carbon footprint, there's cost optimization and so forth. So excited to really leverage the AP Kudo network and get this airline to get the benefits of that tied to this fabric. Comment. I just Made. There's also their robotics. Right. Appcuto has processing automation that these Its Disposition partners are using to process devices, which means that this airlines, their iPads and iPhones will go down a process using robotics processing automation that will allow for faster throughput elimination of cosmetic grading subjectivity and really just better overall data outputs in general. And then you also kind of alluded to some tweaks that we will potentially be making in this employee purchase model. Traditionally, this airline, when their users have purchased their devices, they have sent them back to one of these Its Disposition partners in our network. Those devices are wiped, then they are then sent back to their end user, that exact device that they were using. We are working on a new model and really just waiting for approvals so that the user can purchase their device, but actually keep their device in their hands and we can trigger a remote wipe. So to your point earlier, right, that reduces the carbon footprint by reducing or eliminating those two legs of shipment. There's a lot of cost optimization and not having to ship or touch those devices. So a new model there that we are excited about and we think will transform and even improve that overall employee purchase experience for not just the end users, but also for the IT admins that are managing that as well. So a lot of things on the near term horizon that we're working towards, but again, grateful to have a partner that leans in to these new solutions and, and we can bring these new solutions to market with them.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah. It's been very clear that throughout this relationship you've tackled problem after problem and solving it. And once one problem is solved, you are freed up to take on a new challenge or to seize a new opportunity, especially in the case of employee purchase. So it's been really fun to witness that and work with the folks at this airline who have benefited from those advancements and in turn, our additional, you know, all of our other customers have benefited from those advancements as well. So it's kind of, as you said, the perfect dream customer scenario. Well, thank you Ben, for sharing your perspective on this particular customer and how it has impacted enterprise. Take back customers and recover customers with very specific needs and shedding light on this process and how it's all come together over the years and where it's heading. It's very exciting. It's always exciting because there's always a new challenge to tackle and so long as you have willing partners to take on those challenges, it keeps it fun and exciting.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep, exactly right. And thank you for hosting me. Great conversation and yeah, just thanks again.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thanks to the listeners for tuning in to today's session. Again, if you have questions or feedback on topics or guests, send me an email. But with that, we will say have a great day and we'll see you at the next one. Thanks.
