MILWAUKEE — Johnson Controls announced on June 3 the release of Enterprise Management 2.0, an open, scalable, comprehensive analytics platform with cloud-based versatility that enables enterprises to take a proactive approach to managing a building or an entire portfolio from a single pane of glass. The announcement comes on the heels of the company’s designation as “Industrial IoT Innovator of the Year” by IoT Breakthrough.
Enterprise Management is an energy, asset, occupant and tenant billing management system. The platform utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to proactively analyze building data across the enterprise and help customers identify opportunities to save money and streamline operations. Some features of the updated platform include:
- Energy Management: Energy use – thermal, water, electrical, storage, carbon – can be tracked, analyzed and managed, allowing users to forecast energy usage in advance and adjust behavior accordingly.
- Space Performance: Start with data for real understanding of building spaces and how they are used. Uncover underutilized spaces or get the true story behind complaints about conference room overbooking.
- Data Visualization Widgets: Define a dashboard or use one of the available templates. This puts the power to predict, prioritize, perform, analyze, manage, question and share firmly in the customer’s hands.
- Financial Health & Utility Bill Management: Track and manage each enterprise location with a broad view of costs and returns related to utility consumption, people services (such as cafeteria), space / infrastructure services (such as waste management), plus capital expenses – all in one easy-to-use app.
- Asset Performance & Maintenance Management: The Asset Performance App uses Fault Detection & Diagnostics to put managers at the top of the data and at the top of their class. Generate and track work orders, review equipment fault trends, and converse via app with the customer – the Maintenance Management App solves issues and improves customer experiences.
“This upgrade to Enterprise Management 2.0 is such an exciting evolution in our portfolio, giving customers advanced answers for their enterprise in a proactive, customized and streamlined way,” said Terrill Laughton, vice president and general manager of Energy Optimization & Connected Equipment at Johnson Controls. “Enterprise Management is a great place to start a digital transformation journey and ensures the current and future needs of buildings are met. It is scalable which means we can meet the needs of one building, a portfolio of buildings of any size, or a global enterprise.”
Enterprise Management is agnostic in relation to building automation systems, infrastructure, or service providers, meaning it can be layered into technologies or systems that are already in place and provide new insights without starting from scratch.
In addition to gaining insight into utility and energy management, the platform supports apps to allow occupants and employees to have insight into and control over their environment. The occupant management apps include:
- Companion: Allows employees to control their own lighting and temperature, navigate to and reserve building spaces – all using their smart phone. When connected to an access control system, lighting and temperature is automatically set when an employee badges in. Put control in the hands of the users and keep calls to a minimum.
- Tenant Management: Accurately charge tenants for their individual energy use and give them visibility to monitor and manage their own consumption – it’s a win-win. Empower tenants to act on data and information in close to real time.
- Kiosk: Share energy and sustainability efforts to inspire, engage and inform. Vibrant visuals share key sustainability data anywhere people spend time – in lobbies, elevators, cafeterias and more. Attract employees, engage occupants, inspire change.
An added benefit is that Enterprise Management is agnostic in relation to building automation systems, infrastructure, or service providers, meaning it can be layered into technologies or systems that are already in place and provide new insights without starting from scratch.
For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow @johnsoncontrols on Twitter.
Getting the Word Out to Contracting Teams
Contracting Business obtained an interview with Vineet Sinha, Director & General Manager of Digital Solutions at Johnson Controls, to obtain further insight into how Enterprise Management 2.0 is accessible to mechanical contracting businesses of all sizes, not just mega-sized firms. He told us that he and Channel Sales Manager Andy Redick have visited a combined 25 U.S. cities in 8 months, meeting with mechanical and controls contractors and attending industry conferences to explain the new features of 2.0.
"We’ve been traveling from Toronto to Austin, Tex., and east to west, educating the contractor space on how technology, IoT, smart buildings, and analytics is coming along, and what JCI is going to help them get on the bandwagon," he said."We've had conversations with contracting business leaders for service, new construction and business development. At larger businesses, we met IT or transformation people. Our goal is to tell them that when they buy equipment from JCI, such as chillers or rooftop units, it's a natural transition for us to extend digital technologies to them."
Sinha was pleased that Johnson Controls offers an "entry level" version of Enterprise Management 2.0 to smaller contracting businesses.
"Some contracting businesses need entry-level options,where they can augment an existing service contract with the tools we provide. So we introduced the 'Contractor Monitoring Service,' which gives them an entry-level assortment of features, where they can see their key energy and equipment dashboards. This gets them on the bandwagon of digital technology for their customers," Sinha said.
Sinha explained the CMS helps these contracting businesses get up to speed in three ways:
1. "It is priced extremely competitively, so they can realize a fast return on investment by connecting multiple customer sites. An in that scenario, they are buying a license for their service team that can be used across multiple customer sites, to provide centralized monitoring services and reduce truck rolls," and other savings.
2. "If it is a larger customer, such as a university, or other multiple site business, and they want to purchase their own license, and receive special services from the contractor, they have the option of doing a sell-through license to their customers, make some margin on the license and still have all of those productivity benefits, because they and their customers weould have access to the data and analytics."
3. "If they want to make it even more advanced, and want advisory services from Johnson Controls, we can help augment their controls capabilities and energy sustainability capabilities, to offer ideas or energy convservation measures based on the data that is coming from their customer's buildings. They can sign up for those services from JCI and in turn use it with customers and they have complete freedom on pricing services to make margin on the service as well as the equipment."
Sinha said simplicity is built into these systems, to help contracting businesses learn it faster and to accelerate its usage across generations of technicians.
"Our systems are designed in a way that we try to take the complexity out of the technology. So that even a 50-year-old service technician who is used to paper-based reporting should easily be easily able to start using the new tool, because all the terminology is familiar and the screens look very similar to how we were doing it before. The system is online and easier to read. It can work on laptop, tablet or phone, and the fact that they are connected and have access to data 24/7, they can plan their days better. They can look at reports faster, in case there was an alarm or alert coming from a local system, and generally remain focused on customer service."
Sinha said that prior to the launch of JEM 2.0, select customers had been using it in Alpha and Beta trials.
"One was a university, that is using detection and diagnostic data, connected to their service technicians' schedules, in terms of what needs to be fixed. So they're using diagnostics to find out where in the system a fault lies.
"Another is a corporate building team that was using JEM 1.3, and was upgraded to JEM 2.0 by signing up for the Beta program. Now they have the ability to capture utility bills within the energy and financial modules. They can do a complete association from the utility bill data into how the are consuming energy in different spaces within the building."