Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
William Barkawi, Clearops: In one sentence: We digitize and optimize the supply chains of machine manufacturing industrial companies.
In one paragraph: Clearops connects machine manufacturers with their dealer and distribution network, all the way to the end customer, including the machine in use. Through the complete digitalization of the supply chain, diverse data is combined in an unprecedented way, enabling optimal demand planning for future demand for new machines, spare parts, and services. This planning, as well as the downstream ordering and commissioning processes, are then our software-as-a-service solution automatically orchestrated. This allows, among other things, increased parts availability, significantly reduced machine downtime, lowered inventory levels, and shortened delivery times. Hence our customer value proposition: "Anticipate Demand. Ensure Supply. Eliminate Downtime."
To give a practical example: What do a combine harvester during harvest time, a crane on a large construction site, an airplane during the holiday season, and a mixing plant in a 24-hour food production facility all have in common? They must not fail. If that does happen, it costs enormous amounts of time and money and also leads to dissatisfied customers. As a concrete example: The downtime costs of the combine harvester in question alone can easily amount to 30,000 euros a day. This immediately raises the questions: How do we get such machines back up and running as quickly as possible? And how can we anticipate or even prevent such failures, e.g., through preventative repair measures?
This is exactly where our software comes into play: maximum supply chain transparency and automation for minimal downtime.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
William Barkawi: Not at all! There are two key (very technical) distinguishing features from all other solutions:
On the one hand, the level of integration we can offer is unique in the market. Existing interfaces allow us to relatively easily "look deep into" production and inventory management systems and processes, and even optimize them if necessary. This means we can extract data from the respective systems highly efficiently with minimal upfront technical effort. Within our data hub, this data is then processed using the latest machine learning technology and ultimately fed back into the respective systems as a forecast, purchase order, or service order (without any manual intermediary steps).
The second distinguishing feature is the interlocking of the many functions: There are certainly very good inventory optimization, fleet management, or service control software out there. However, they can only do exactly that. Global service control and supply chain optimization, however, require holistic warehouse and parts requirements planning; optimal requirements planning, in turn, requires service and technician orders, IoT data, and insight into the installed base—i.e., the machine population—from fleet management systems. In short: There are an incredible number of processes that must interlock. Until now, this has been solved using various individual tools or manual work steps. We offer a holistic, automated solution for the big picture.
Clearops: “We carry a certain consulting DNA within us”
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
William Barkawi: That's a long story: The core of Clearops emerged within a consulting project for a large agricultural machinery manufacturer. At the time, the manufacturer had no insight into its dealer network or future demand for machinery and spare parts. This naturally made production planning quite difficult. It quickly became clear that there was no holistic solution on the market for connecting independent companies (OEMs and dealers), each with its own IT infrastructure, and subsequently implementing supply chain optimization. It also became clear that we had the opportunity to develop a concept that would be of interest to many machine manufacturers. This realization was, in a sense, the birth of Clearops. Today, we are an independent software company. And the consulting firm remains our closest implementation partner.
This unique history continues to define our culture today: Because I and a large part of the team share a certain consulting DNA, our philosophy is to find the best individual solutions and offer customers tailor-made solutions. These are the things that make every day unique and exciting. At the same time, we also know how important scaling effects are for our business model, especially as a software company. To combine customer satisfaction and scalability, we developed an adaptive solution from the outset that covers a wide variety of complex structures and processes. It is precisely this investment that allows us to satisfy our customers and still (or perhaps precisely because of) achieve strong growth!
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
William Barkawi: Many challenges come to mind: from building the team and collaborating across five continents, the inevitable growing pains within the organization, to relocating our development team from Russia, to the constant pursuit of a balance between quality and speed, especially in product development. Above all, finding the right people who are a great fit for Clearops both professionally and personally is a major challenge.
For me personally, it was probably growing into the CEO role at a very young age, while the company was already gaining momentum. You also have to get used to the side effects of entrepreneurial success (decision-making pressure, workload, personnel responsibility, etc.). You have to have a solution for everything, be available at all times, and deal with new, seemingly hopeless challenges almost daily. It's essential to have a strong team and advisors on board, and to honestly accept their well-intentioned criticism.
“Launch new products and services every month”
Munich Startup: How are things going?
William Barkawi: In general, we're clearly noticing that the demand for supply chain software and data integration is growing ever larger. Especially in times of unstable supply chains, companies need to digitize their supply chains to create transparency, optimize supplier management in a cost-effective manner, produce according to actual demand, and ultimately serve customers on time.
What this means for us: Industry pioneers such as AGCO, Terex, Stihl and Jungheinrich are already using our tool worldwide, digitizing and optimizing global supply chains with millions of parts and thousands of technicians.
We're currently growing rapidly as a team and plan to have around 50 people by the end of the year. In the last three months, we opened a new technology hub for developers in Lisbon and a new office in the US. At the same time, we're launching new products and services every month, which is why our ambitions for the next three years are quite aggressive. By the way: We're hiring!
The most important number for me, however, is how many employees and customers have left us so far: zero. And in my opinion, this is the most important metric for benchmarking our success, our technology, customer value, and ultimately our corporate culture.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
William Barkawi: I have the impression that the first association with Munich is often "expensive." Staff, infrastructure, living costs, taxes. This image simply sticks to the city and hurts the attraction of new startups.
However, I consider Munich to be a highly interesting location, especially from the perspective of a tech startup: a stable political foundation (now that we have a development office in Saint Petersburg, we no longer take political stability for granted), an incredible number of motivated, bright minds, relevant funding programs, a well-connected startup scene, the immediate proximity to numerous world market leaders and globally active corporations... if there is one thing that Munich is not lacking, it is opportunities!
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
William Barkawi: That's a question I often ask myself. My motto, regardless of whether it's physical or digital products, is to always produce or develop your own core competencies yourself. Everything that benefits your USP should be produced in-house. In all other areas, I think outsourcing makes more sense. On the one hand, because it allows you to focus on the right things, and on the other hand, because it's often simply more economical and usually faster. However, it's extremely important not to become dependent on them, and on the other hand, to always ask yourself critically: Does the outsourcing model or solution fit with our corporate philosophy and our values (example: production in low-wage countries).
