How Subscription Models Are Revolutionizing Machine Control Solutions

Subscriptions have become a key part of our professional and personal lives, from Adobe Suite to Netflix.

These service models aren’t just for offices, however, and machine control subscription solutions like Trimble’s are offering a new way for contractors to approach projects.

To learn more about machine control subscriptions, Roads & Bridges spoke to Trimble’s Associate Vice President of Strategic Transformation Toni Piwonka and Filed Systems Subscription Manager Alex Heinlein.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Roads & Bridges: What is Trimble doing around machine control solution subscriptions and how do your roles fit into that?

Toni Piwonka: Within my group, we are driving the change to subscription for a large division of Trimble that includes machine control. We’re looking at everything from making sure we offer the right subscriptions that are high value at the right price, making sure we have the right systems in place for customers and our dealers to be able to purchase and manage those subscriptions, and making sure we have the right data.

Alex Heinlein: In working with Toni’s team, I and my team primarily take a lot of the current offerings, like Trimble Earthworks machine control and its companion product Trimble Siteworks Positioning Systems, and turn them into subscription offerings that make sense for our customers.

R&B: Could you highlight a few of these subscription solutions that you’re working with?

AH: Our two primary subscription offerings are our Trimble Works Plus subscription and our Trimble Works subscription. They are all-inclusive. What I mean by that is hardware, software, licensing, all the connectivity pieces that would be needed for a contractor to get into earthworks or machine control as easily as possible. We take all those parts and bring them together into one subscription offering for our customers. It takes a lot of the normal needs that a customer would have, whether they’re an experienced user or new to machine control or construction technology, and combines it all together into a bundled experience that really simplifies that purchasing decision process.

TP: I think we’re really trying to reduce friction. Make it super easy for contractors, especially those that are new to machine control or technology in general, make it as easy as possible to come on and try it.

One of the biggest benefits of subscription is it’s a low monthly payment with a much lower upfront cost. That reduces the barrier to try. We’re hoping that people experiment with and get used to machine control through this offering.

R&B: What were some of the needs identified when creating these technologies and centralization?

AH: One of the biggest needs that we had was being able to make the technology as accessible as possible to a wide range of customers. All different customers have all different ways that they want to acquire their construction technology. Our goal was to really meet those customers where they’re at.

This was designed to fit a wide range of customers, everyone from small to large contractors. Whether they are freshly starting out and still have different capital needs; whether they’re an established business that has standardized or mixed fleets and they just need different ways to manage, track and maintain all of their equipment.

Our customer base said that our technology is great, but we should make it easier for them to integrate it into their businesses and processes. We set out to do that by introducing these subscriptions and bundling everything together.

TP: There are a lot of situations where contractors are working on a project for a set amount of time. This subscription model allows them to get the technology, then cancel the subscription at the end of the project. There’s no leftover residual hardware to sell off or divvy out to the various parties.

By having a subscription, they can totally predict their cost. If you’re bidding on a project, you know exactly what the cost would be over the course of the project. That was another thing we heard from our larger customers that they needed.

R&B: How are you seeing folks save with the subscription model?

TP: I think subscription really aligns where the larger companies want predictable costs and where smaller companies don't have the capital or don't want to take a loan to get the capital to buy a full-blown system. This allows them to get it at a far lower price. In that case, it actually can lower how leveraged they are and improve their credit rating. There’s a lot of benefits depending on your circumstances that are completely different, frankly.

AH: Even today in our bundle, we include features and benefits that are of huge value to our customers and save them true dollars over the course of their ownership. One of the main things that we have — what we've heard a lot from our customers that they find a lot of value in — is that in our Trimble Works Plus bundles, we include our Technology Assurance package.

Major components of that are accidental damage coverage for if something were to break on site. We've seen customers who run over pieces with a truck. Whatever it may be, it's an active job site, things do happen, right? The repair or replacement is included in your monthly subscription price, so you don't have to pay out of pocket.

The second thing that we include in our Technology Assurance are what we call hardware upgrades. If Trimble releases a new version of whatever piece of hardware that they're using, and they're under subscription, they automatically get to upgrade to that new device. New display, new receivers, whatever it may be, if we come out with a new version, they automatically can upgrade at no additional charge. As the technology improves, they're always on the latest and greatest.

R&B: Is there anything you’re looking forward to in expanding this technology?

TP: We're looking both at offerings that would meet other specific customer needs, as well as integrating new technology. We have an active R&D program here. We have a lot of engineers that are coming up with really great advancements to machine control every year. But in addition, we're looking at how we how can we innovate further on the offering side and bring customers new kinds of subscriptions that would better meet their needs.

AH: I always look forward to that next offering that works for our customers. I'm always looking to understand more about what our customers are doing in the field, how they're using it, and how we can solve those problems with our upcoming offerings and updates.

TP: I think one of the things Trimble’s really aware of is we're getting more requests to support mixed fleet. We’re absolutely diversifying our portfolio to make that’s easy for a contractor to do, so that's something that we're looking forward to for sure.