Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’ve worked with them in several different positions. For this project, in particular, I was the CTO of a commercial laundry group.
What challenge were you trying to address with 923 Digital?
We needed a team to bring the system up. We had the general architecture and approach and we wanted to outsource the development.
What was the scope of their involvement?
They built out the front- and backend of our IoT system. We had a bunch of commercial laundry equipment that was out in the field and they built a data ingestion pipe and a counterpart processing system in the cloud using AWS infrastructure. Then they built a pretty powerful frontend that allows our customers, distribution partners, and internal teams to evaluate the system in real-time.
What is the team composition?
We had several points of contact and about 10 people on the team overall.
How did you come to work with 923 Digital?
I’ve worked with them in the past on a different project. They deliver, they’re efficient from a capital perspective, they’re flexible, and they’re easy to work with.
How much have you invested with them?
It was north of $300,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
The project lasted from July 2015–June 2019.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
It was a clear differentiator for us. It gave us more visibility for our customers. Now they’re able to understand their operations and extract methods in real-time and on a semi-regular basis. It helps us stand out in the market.
At a high level, we track customer utilization of the portal. As we continue to roll out new features, we’ve seen a steady increase in the utilization of the technology for our customer base and from our internal team.
How did 923 Digital perform from a project management standpoint?
They were great; we had no issues at all. We had a regular meeting cadence and we were able to roll out our requirements to them on a regular basis and they delivered. They typically organized their work around two-week sprints. We used conference calls and Trello to communicate.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Their ability to understand project requirements. On top of that, they’re really easy to work with. I’ve worked with several third-party providers, and 923 Digital stands out for their flexibility.
Are there any areas they could improve?
As they look to grow, they’ll need to replicate the types of individuals they have running the programs. It’s hard to find, recruit, and develop people so their team continues to grow and work as the core team does now. That’s their challenge.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
They’re able to synthesize requirements and provide alternative ways of thinking about things. They really go through that extra effort to make those suggestions, so you should take advantage of that. Their insights are very valuable and that distinguishes them from other providers.
When it comes to washing, there is a way to do it with less. Less water, energy and chemicals. XC is a new textiles technology that uses reusable polymer spheres, which they call XOrbs, to wash and care for textiles. It’s scalable from home washes to heavy industrialuse and it has already saved millions of liters of water.
To match this incredible cleaning technology, Xerosneeded an application that connected to the washers and demonstrated the positive impact the users had on the environment. They teamed up with NineTwoThree and built an CES Award Winning Application for best innovation in 2018.
Since the early 2000’s clothing production has doubled and is expected to double again in the next decade. We buy 60% more clothing than we did 15 years ago but only keep things for half as long, with a reported 84% of textiles ending up in landfills.
Studies have found if we could extend the life of 1 in 5 garments by just 10%, an estimated 6.4 million tonnes of textiles would be diverted from landfills, potentially saving 3 million tonnes of CO2 and 150 million liters of water every year.
The XC technology can be integrated at any scale to enhance commercial washing machines through the combination of our patented XDrum and XOrb technology. This robust technology can be scaled from small commercial drum sizes to over 2,000L machines for industry. The XOrbs are released through a closed-loop system, complimenting wash programmes to reduce the impact of laundry.
Using XOrbs allows for a significant reduction of water, chemistry and energy, with the benefit of more gentle mechanical action to improve wash performance and better care for fabrics allowing them to last longer. At the end of the cycle, the XDrum collects the XOrbs back into their storage system. Their team supports wash cycle development and the technical transfer process to enable our technology to work seamlessly with any washing machine brand.
The Bombay Research Association performed a study that proved Xeros technology’s impact. It found that it significantly lessens the damage caused to fabrics during washing and found that it used 41% less water, 36% less energy and 21% less detergent than the comparison good green-standards machine.
NineTwoThree are both proud and excited to report that we helped Xeros reach a significant milestone. Thousands of organizations across the globe have saved millions of liters of water and reduced tons of trash by extending the life of garments since 2014! To learn more about Xeros Tech and the other ways they are helping the planet be sure to visit their website.
