2024-2025Democratising device management from the ground up
Company
Unify is a hardware-agnostic, multi-sided platform for business critical devices, designed for in-store needs ranging from Retail, to Hospitality and Food & Beverage. In 2024 I collaborated with Unify (startup) as Founding Product & Designer to move from 0 to 1 and make a convincing pitch deck and MVP for investors. Through research we identified there was a gap in the market when it came to device management solutions for small to medium businesses.
Role
Founding Product Designer
Product lead
Product strategy
UX research, workshops
Context
Existing mobile device management (MDM) tools either favor and or support a specific operating system. The few MDMs (Hexnode, ScaleFusion) that support multiple devices tend to be built for Big Enterprises (+10,000 devices) with complex workflows.
Outcome
3
Letters of intent from potential go to market partnertships
+20
interviews with industry experts in Fintech, Device management and Retail & Hospitality
+10
presentations with VC firms and angel investors
Challenges
The reality is most small to medium businesses are made up of multiple devices serving different purposes. A restaurant may use a Windows computer to manage their email, an iOS tablet to manage reservations and an Android phone to take orders. These devices, unlike with Big Enterprises, are managed by people on the ground, not specialised IT teams. When devices stop working, which happens all the time, they are the first impacted and responsible to bring it back online.
We discovered non-tech savvy users struggled to understand how to manage and make the most out of devices. This was leading to low utilisation rates and in some cases high return rates due to data silos in performance and maintainability.
“What ends up happening is, if a device can’t be used, it gets put to a side. And then before you know it, you’ve got hundreds of devices that aren’t being used and have been left on the side hindering operations”
Findings
73%
of businesses experience insufficient analytics and reporting capabilities at the fleet or device level
82%
of businesses experience an absence of a centralised source of truth on a fleet or device level
91%
of businesses experience an inability to effectively diagnose and resolve issues on-site or remotely
64%
are dissatisfied with existing mobile device management tools
Investors deck
With these findings we were able to brainstorm Unify’s unique selling points and create an investors deck highlighting its future plans.
Feel free to reach out to go more indepth into this project.
Team
Pascal van Hattem - Founder
Merlijn Vos - Technical Founder