Weber’s Journey: How a Top Grill Maker Serves Up Connected Cooking

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.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

• How Weber worked with Applause to develop a testing program for connected grills and thermometers to improve platform stability and user experience
  
• Ways Weber was able to scale testing across different regions, platforms and devices to roll out new products in new geographic markets
  
• Key digital quality considerations for companies entering the IoT space.
  

Speakers

Matt Hannan

• Connected Lead, R&D - IoT • Weber-Stephen Products

Matt joined Weber in January 2019 to oversee the company’s entry into the connected device market. Previously, he led product development teams at Continental and Snap-on Tools. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Marquette University and an MBA with a concentration on finance and operations from DePaul University’s Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business.

Travis Howell

• Solution Delivery Manager • Applause

Travis joined Applause’s uTest community in 2010 and became a project manager for Applause in 2014. Before that, he held project management and technical analyst roles at Corporation Service Company, Lincoln Financial Group, and Honeywell. He holds a bachelor’s in economics from Penn State University.

Applause is the worldwide leader in crowdsourced digital quality testing. With testers available on-demand around the globe, Applause provides brands with a full suite of testing and feedback capabilities. This approach drastically improves testing coverage, eliminates the limitations of offshoring and traditional QA labs, and speeds up time-to-market.