Some 40 years ago, Ovarro started through its people collectively working together, sharing knowledge and ideas to create solutions that would solve problems for its customers through engineering ingenuity. Ovarro CEO, David Frost has been recognised by CEO Monthly as CEO of the Year 2021 – Leicestershire for his success with the company. Join us as we find out how he did it.
Ovarro’s ethos of innovation is what makes it so successful and has created a global business, providing critical technology that is working 24/7 behind the scenes to ensure people and businesses can get on with their daily lives through intelligently managing assets across critical and national infrastructure.
The company serves the industrial IoT marketplace globally. Wherever there is a need to monitor and control a remote asset, Ovarro has a role to play. It particularly focuses on demanding applications within the utility sector (water, power, oil and gas, general process industries) as well as the infrastructure within broadcast, telecoms and transport.
It serves its markets through both a direct and indirect sales model, working with Approved Ovarro Partners (AOPs) in most countries around the world. The UK is Ovarro’s home market where it looks to serve the major utility companies through a direct sales model.
At Ovarro, the number one company value is ‘one team’. The success of the business is as a result of every single team member understanding what the company is aiming to achieve in support of its customers and knowing their roles in order to help it get there. Ovarro continues to invest heavily into the development of its people, most recently launching ‘Ovarro Academy’ and an ‘Ovarro way’ of leading supported by a comprehensive leadership model applicable to all team members.
The world in which Ovarro operates is data rich and information hungry. And the pandemic has helped its customers accelerate the move to the digital world, and the demands of its products and services is increasing as a result. As the pandemic hit the world, Ovarro moved quickly and decisively to set up 80% of its global population to work remotely, protecting the remaining 20% working in its factories in as safe as an environment as it could make it.
Thankfully, Ovarro end markets have demonstrated tremendous resilience to all the pandemic has thrown at it and has remained fully operational throughout. To that end, its staff are now benefitting from a better balance of work / life as the company considers returning post-pandemic and creating an environment for its teams to thrive within.
Ovarro’s primary focus is to help its customers turn data into actionable insight into the performance of their assets. This requires it to continue to invest in the latest technology for monitoring, controlling and communicating data form remote assets. Ovarro has launched a new family of data loggers, capable of simple pressure and flow monitoring through to transient pressure event logging and acoustic noise detecting for pinpointing leaks on water networks.
The company is now turning its attention to developing a suite of applications to help interpret data for its customers. It is applying advanced data analytics tools alongside its application know-how to present its customers with full managed service offerings that provide true insight into their operations.
Prior to joining Ovarro as CEO, David Frost enjoyed a career of over 20 years working with the larger industrial automation giants such as GE, Honeywell and the Eaton Corporation. He progressed through product line leadership roles before spending the last 10 years of his career in general management in both the UK and US.
Joining Ovarro was a fantastic opportunity for him to truly deploy all of his learnings and experiences of Corporate America to a business hungry for change, investment and leadership through a rapid growth chapter of its history.
By far the biggest challenge since David joined Ovarro has been the pandemic. He said, “When faced with a situation for which there is no rule book, your leadership experiences are truly tested, a moment that truly defines you as a leader and as an organisation.”
“I am very proud of everyone at Ovarro in the way they have responded so positively in the face of adversity. It set us a true test to see if we do live our values every day and provided us all with many opportunities. I can confidently say we are meeting the test so far!”
Indeed, the last three years have been the best of David’s career to date, without question. He and the team have achieved so much together, learning and leading in the ‘Ovarro way’! Long may it continue!
