Helping Customers Meet Business Needs: The Cornerstone of SmartSense Innovation

Helping Customers Meet Business Needs: The Cornerstone of SmartSense Innovation

Written by: Steve Habermas

Before I started my career as an engineering and product executive in the software industry, I spent several years as a Division Officer in the United States Navy. During my service, I was responsible for the daily operation of the USS Nebraska, a nuclear ballistic missile submarine.

My tour of duty was an amazing experience. I learned not only how to lead people on difficult missions—in this case, 165 sailors—but also how to manage a complex $1.8 billion fully self-contained environment.

Deploying a submarine is a lesson in asset optimization. As soon as you are deep below the surface of the ocean, you can depend only on the people and technology onboard—nothing more, nothing less. When problems arise, you need to leverage what you have and solve the problem!

Engineering products solving real-world business problems

My years in the navy were highly influential on the philosophy of innovation I’ve developed regarding engineering and product management in the IoT industry. In our age of digital transformation, miniaturization, and ever-improving cellular networks, it's tempting to get caught up in the hype of new technologies that may or may not solve problems.

But at SmartSense, the industries and customers we serve have pressing business problems that need answers right now—not sometime in the future. As CTO, my philosophy of technological innovation is guided by our mission to provide reliable and impactful insights and pragmatic solutions for our customers’ real-world challenges, including:

• Safety of customers and the quality and efficacy of products
  
• Risks of non-compliance, loss of product, and brand reputation damage
• Need for complete, accurate, timely, and transparent records
• Business inefficiencies caused by manual processes that bleed time and money

Innovation valuing simplicity and reliability

Our R&D mission is to leverage the technologies that best solve our customers' problems—plain and simple. These problems might be the ones they have right now, problems they anticipate based on business trends, or problems they don't even know they have because their operations are out of date and unable to keep up with the competition...

Read the full blog HERE

Steve Habermas has been Chief Technology Officer at SmartSense by Digi since July of 2020. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a BS in electrical engineering, Georgia Tech with an MS in electrical engineering, and UC Berkeley with an MBA. Steve began his career as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy before transitioning to the commercial software product industry. If you have a question about this post, you can contact him at Steve.Habermas@digi.com.