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LiveView Technologies, Inc. (LVT) was founded 15 years ago to help lenders and homeowners monitor a high-end residential construction site in Park City, Utah. Most of the homeowners lived in California. The lenders operated out of Salt Lake City, so they needed a way to monitor the site remotely, explains Andrew Gale, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. LVT mounted a camera on a pole and successfully set up a system to monitor the construction site. Soon, state transportation departments asked for similar systems to monitor snowfall in various mountain ranges.
When companies began asking for more sophisticated systems, LVT designed a fully contained, standalone trailer with a 30-foot boom to hang IoT devices depending on a company’s needs. The trailer transmits data via a cellular network and is solar-powered.
“We took it to a trade show, and the first people in the booth were from Walmart,” Gale says. “That led to a single-source contract. I can’t tell you the number of unsolicited calls we get from people in a Walmart parking lot asking how they can get one to monitor a solar farm, a landscaping business, or other business.”
IoT Mobile Security System Launches in 30 Minutes
LiveView Technologies can deploy the system anywhere and have it up and running in 30 minutes by creating a fully self-contained and self-powered system. “We don’t need hardwired internet technologies or the involvement of an IT team, so we avoid red tape. And there’s no need for a power supply,” Gale says. “The vast majority are in big-box parking lots like Home Depot, Walmart, and Kroger, and the advantage we have versus pole-mounted cameras is that our units are visible with flashing strobe lights. We let a client’s customers know they are being watched.”
Customers have reported up to a 60% decrease in parking lot incidents, which include anything from assaults to carjacking to vandalism, he adds. “Ironically, one of our largest customers came to us and said they wanted a system because when another big box retailer put one in down the street; it drove all the bad guys to them,” Gale says.
Unsupported Accounting System Couldn’t Keep Up
LiveView Technologies was using legacy QuickBooks as its financial system, which was unsupported and disconnected from its E2 manufacturing system. “We are different from a typical technology company in three ways,” Gale says. “First, we are a hardware and a software company; second, we’ve always been profitable and have never taken any outside money; and third, we’ve bootstrapped everything so some of our tools reflected that bootstrapped environment.”
Gale was hired to put LVT’s financials in order, and to prep for a three-year audit. Company executives were evaluating ERP software and were close to signing with Microsoft Dynamics. “During the interview process I told them they should really look at Acumatica,” Gale says. “A year before, I had done an ERP evaluation with Microsoft Dynamics, Epicor, and Acumatica and went with Acumatica. I told them Acumatica was a really cool package—one that they really needed to look at.”
Using QuickBooks and other legacy software, LVT had problems with inventory accuracy. “They could literally watch inventory change when no one was in the system,” says Gale. “They had lost faith in the financial system in use at the time.”
The legacy accounting system was not integrated with the sales order process, and the company lacked manufacturing planning and scheduling functionality.
