Established brands creating their first IoT offerings often need new knowledge and skills to guide their product development efforts. When one of the biggest names in household grills decided to enter the IoT space, the company set an aggressive timeline for rolling out new products — and hired a small team to bring the vision to market. Once Weber had launched its first IoT-based grill integration and smart thermometer, staff saw opportunities to hone and improve the customer experience while rolling out additional connected products. Finding the right partners allowed Weber to scale to improve existing product quality and collect valuable feedback earlier in the new product development process.

1. Weber’s Journey: How a Top
Grill Maker Serves Up
Connected Cooking
Transitioning from a hardware manufacturer to
an IoT organization
Matt Hannan
Connected Lead, R&D - IoT atWeber-Stephen Products
Travis Howell
Solution Delivery Manager at Applause

2. Presenters of This Session
2
Sam Lucero
Chief Analyst, IoT Services
&Technologies
Travis Howell
Solution Delivery Manager
Matt Hannan
Connected Lead, R&D - IoT

3. Today’s Agenda
3
1
3
2
4
Overview of the IoT
Landscape
Scaling Testing to Support
Weber’s Market Expansion
How Weber and Applause
Developed a Testing Program
Key Digital Quality
Considerations: Moving from
Hardware to IoT

4. IOT LANDSCAPE

5. The IoT market is growing strongly, but…
5
0
5,000,000
10,000,000
15,000,000
20,000,000
25,000,000
CY19 CY20 CY21 CY22 CY23 CY24 CY25 CY26 CY27 CY28 CY29 CY30
EMEA APAC Americas
IoT device shipment forecast, global market, 2019 - 2026
Annual unit shipments in 000s

6. North American enterprises perceive significant barriers to IoT adoption
Complexity!
35%
32%
32%
31%
31%
25%
23%
22%
20%
19%
19%
13%
Ensuring data, network and device security
Ensuring data privacy or governance
Concerns about integration with legacy IT and networks
Concern over service reliability or network coverage
Complexity of integrating with business processes / OT
Developing a clear IoT business case/demonstrating RoI
Lack of investment budget
Lack of internal IoT expertise
Ability to derive business value from IoT data
IoT technologies and solutions are still not mature/standardized
Insufficient support from senior management
Resistance from line-of-business leaders / team
What do you see as the biggest challenges to successful IoT adoption by your organization?
Multiple response question. % shows share of respondents in each country who put challenge as one of their "top three." n = 204

7. Putting a finer point on it – “most important” barrier
7
n = 204. Chart shows % of North America respondents selecting the option as the "most important" barrier. "Not relevant/don't know" answers not shown.
Biggest barrier to realizing more value from IoT data
Concerns about security, privacy and compliance risks in using IoT data
Difficulty integrating IoT data with business processes and applications
Lack staff or technical capacity to develop new IoT data-based services
Platform doesn't make it easy to obtain deeper insights from IoT data
Internal disagreement/inertia on how best to use IoT data to change business processes or model
IoT data insufficient/not-representative
24%
18%
15%
13%
12%
12%

8. Enterprises need "significant" support from suppliers for
planning, training, and integration
8
Training of
internal
staff
Project or
solution design
and planning
Integration of
IoT solution
with existing
IT
31%
34%
34%
Chart shows % of enterprises selecting that they require significant support in the specified area. n = 204. Options for
each support area were: "no support needed;" "some support needed," "significant support needed."
Areas where enterprises report requiring *significant* support for IoT

9. Helping enterprises move past “PoC Hell”
9
Full active
deployment
41%
Trial/PoC stage
38%
Initial set-up (not yet
operational)
21%
Is your organization already planning or deploying
IoT projects?

10. WEBER’S JOURNEY
10

12. Looking for a Testing Partner
12
WEBER’S CONCERNS
Small internal team: Limited QA
resources
Ability to push software & firmware
updates globally
Need to scale to meet aggressive
product release schedules
Offload monitoring & managing
testing from Dev team
APPLAUSE
Ability to test whatWeber needed: extend
beyond internal team’s capabilities.
Detailed bug tracking and seamless
integration withWeber’s existing systems.

13. Developing a Testing Plan
13

14. Testing Issues Weber Couldn’t Evaluate Alone
14
• Provide “always on” validation in multiple geographic locations globally.
• Check multiple use cases with different phone platforms,WiFi routers,
and environmental situations.
• Scale validation for new app, software, and firmware.
• Compliment R&D & IoT testing with user-based validation.
• Help the product team understand the different ways users interact with
the tools.

15. Weber Workflow with Applause
15
Weber
RequestsTest Cycle
Weber Initiates Bug
Fixes
ApplauseConducts
AgainstWeber’s
Requirements
Applause Provides
Consolidated,
Detailed Reporting
on User Experience
Applause Performs
Bug FixVerification
Weber Applause
Includes
Happy Path
and Defects
Applause
Provides
Ability to Dig
Deeper as
Needed

16. Types of Testing Applause Does for Weber
16
DEVICE
COVERAGE
CLOUD &
INFRASTRUCTURE
VALIDATION
NEW COUNTRY
RELEASES
REGRESSION &
FEATURE TESTING

17. SCALING TESTING TO SUPPORT
MARKET GROWTH

18. Rolling out across new regions
18
Already selling in NorthAmerica, Central America, Europe
and the Middle East
Looking to expand inAsia-Pacific
Applause helps test devices & localization

19. KEY DIGITAL QUALITY
CONSIDERATIONS

20. Transitioning from Hardware to IoT
20

21. Q&A