Guardhat Award Write Up

FROST & SULLIVAN BEST PRACTICES AWARD
Company of the Year 2019
CONNECTED SAFETY - NORTH AMERICA

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
© Frost & Sullivan 2019 2 “We Accelerate Growth”
Contents
Background and Company Performance ...................................................................... 3
Industry Challenges............................................................................................ 3
Guardhat's Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact....................... 3
Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 7
Significance of Company of the Year ........................................................................... 8
Understanding Company of the Year ........................................................................... 8
Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................. 9
Visionary Innovation & Performance ..................................................................... 9
Customer Impact ............................................................................................... 9
Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best
Practices............................................................................................................... 10
The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards.................... 11
Research Methodology ...................................................................................... 11
About Frost & Sullivan ............................................................................................ 11

Background and Company Performance
Industry Challenges
The personal protective equipment (PPE) market is evolving to a larger connected safety
space as it integrates wearable technologies into product offerings, intending to boost
security and protection protocols, worker productivity, and long-term cost savings. A
significant gap exists in industries with high-risk occupational hazards and highly mobile
workers (such as those in chemical facilities, oil and gas sites, construction, and mining)
but with limited connectivity. The result renders limited situational awareness for both
individuals and organizational structures. The lack of ‘last mile’ connectivity translates to a
knowledge and safety gap in discerning the location of individuals, the surrounding
conditions, and sub-optimal communications.
The PPE market includes a variety of product categories and use-cases, with some areas
more dynamic than others, and the overall market dynamically evolving to respond to
changing workplace environments and increasing digitalization and automation. Work
environments and workers are connecting to the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-
machine communications, which connect to enterprise resource planning or safety
monitoring systems. Such sensors and monitors incorporated into workplace PPE
wearables hold a promise of increased safety, better compliance and, higher productivity—
however, the success of consumer wearables has not translated to the industrial space.
Buyers for PPE wearables in industrial settings are price sensitive and resistant to
significant process changes. Adding smart technology wearables to PPE increases
equipment prices and often requires larger investments in complex multi-vendor platforms
and systems. Currently, buyers resist implementing major changes and investments in
connected PPE because the return on investment (ROI) seems like a marginal benefit for
an indistinct timeline. As long as the regulatory agencies do not require smart wearables,
buyers will defer decisions to adopt such technologies. Moreover, regulatory standards can
make new product rollouts cumbersome, with many guidelines, standards, and usage
requirements to address and modify before approval. Regulatory approvals can pose
significant challenges when harmonizing sensors and technology with PPE and safety
standards.
Head protection is perhaps the most common and highly commoditized and price sensitive
market; however, the addressable market is large and diverse and smart technologies
have opportunities to prove demonstrable value. The landscape of vendors for smart head
protection is in a nascent stage, but dynamic in product innovations. Across the wide total
potential market, vendors can carve out spaces for customization and niche applications
with dedicated features and form factors. Incorporating sensors and communication
elements in the helmets that relay information to a platform system can provide useful

information for monitoring location, atmosphere or pollutants, and situational
responsiveness.1
Thus far, innovation has been incremental—a truly revolutionary value in the space would
be the form of a more comprehensive vision for connecting endpoints wearables with a
useful IoT platform and integrations with additional third-party enterprise systems and
sensors. The manifold potential benefits of smart PPE equipment remain unrealized as of
yet, disconnected from the upstream systems and applications. The potential for capturing
useful Big Data remains over the horizon, but broader adoption and application depends
on integrations with smart, wearable PPE. Caught between technology development
sphere and industrial facilities realm, connected PPE manufacturers should leverage more
on-the-ground feedback in development to help mitigate practical challenges and boost
usability. Closer equipment, platform, and enterprise integration and collaboration can
overcome the industry’s price sensitive and prove ROI to propel adoption in hazardous
spaces.2
Guardhat’s Visionary Innovation and Performance/Customer Impact
Founded in 2014 by a group of entrepreneurs with experience in the heavy industry
sector, Guardhat was developed to address the lack of safety solutions available to the
industrial workforce. By combining comprehensive situational awareness technologies with
connected communications, the company’s vision consistently drives toward bridging the
‘last mile’ between wearable safety PPE and enterprise systems. Guardhat’s technology
empowers workers and operators alike with intelligent safety monitoring and connected
situational awareness.
End-to-End System for Full Visibility
Guardhat utilizes a full end-to-end proprietary system that enables an entirely new level
of situational awareness focused on supporting human elements. The Guardhat system
manages a range of data inputs, feeding a purpose-built IoT platform to simultaneously
leverage a wealth of Big Data for comprehensive visibility throughout facilities. The
Guardhat system presents all data using a single pane of glass, consolidating the
spectrum of devices and wearable data sources with a platform to organize and
coordinate. Operators and on-site personnel are able to leverage an intelligent system to
understand situational context, operations, and how people and assets interact.
Accounting for asset and employee location, status, and enabling communication among
them, the Guardhat solution provides real-time perspective. This is especially useful in the
industrial context - with limited communication capabilities (e.g., without WiFi or cellular
1
Wearables and Smart Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) Technologies for the Industrial Market: Wearable PPE Unveils
Growth Opportunities with Promise of Improved Worker Productivity and Long-Term Cost-Savings, (Frost & Sullivan March
2016).
2
Global Internet of Things (IoT) and PPE Industry, 2016: Increased Scrutiny to Spur Early Adoption of Smart/IoT-enabled PPE by
High-risk Industries, (Frost & Sullivan September 2017).

networks) – as the Guardhat platform is able to locate sensors, assets, and individuals
with a custom built real-time location system (RTLS) geolocation software that provides
sub-meter locational accuracy. With high precision, Guardhat systems alert individuals to
dangerous areas, nearby equipment operation, and security restricted zones. Rather than
relying on traditional radios, Guardhat systems utilize a peer-to-peer network, enabling
real-time communication between individuals, connected assets, and a central hub – all in
an effort to prevent accidents, improve response times/productivity, and unlock a universe
of Big Data potential.
KYRA Platform: Built for Multi-format Data Inputs and Unified Visualization
An evolution of the traditional hardhat, Guardhat’s solution uniquely manages a complete
range of data, and provides a link between sensors and devices by utilizing an in-house
developed platform and control center called KYRA. From field devices producing
gas/temperature/sensing data, wearables and audio/video commutations, the KYRA
platform combines multi-modal data from disparate elements and formats into a single
analytics engine. With the sub-meter accurate geolocation system serving as the
middleware, the platform can deliver new levels of transparency to read individuals’
mobility, position, floor level, proximity, and relationship to people and assets. A leader in
the connected IoT space, Guardhat’s KYRA platform and analytics engine can accept and
process a massive amount of rich, real-time data (geo-stamped and time stamped with
event information) to present a single, human-centric vision and status assessment across
a facility.
Connecting an Ecosystem of Integrations
The Guardhat system provides the last mile of connectivity, stitching together data and
communications previously disjointed. Guardhat’s solution goes beyond its own hardware
and integrates with any connectable sensor, and with a variety of third-party platforms.
Guardhat opens its software platform to licensing and integrations, via Bluetooth, open
application program interface protocols, or any wireless or wired connection, to collaborate
with diverse IoT sensors and wearables - alleviating the high cost for facilities to develop
back-end platforms for collecting and analyzing Big Data from multiple formats.
The company has already partnered with a number of institutions to explore new use
cases for worker connectivity and productivity. Guardhat systems can fluidly integrate
with third-party platforms such as IBM Watson, enterprise resource planning and
enterprise asset management SAP, Oracle, IBM Maximo, as well as HR management
systems. Guarhdat developed its own mobile application, but is able to work with app
developers and system integrators to unlock value from all of the newly connected and
unified data providers.

Real-world Informed Research and Development
Guardhat draws from deep experience in the industrial field to incorporate user and
customer feedback to continually and effectively develop and improve features. In pilot
tests, Guardhat works in a close and structured process to learn how customers,
organizations, and individuals use the devices and toolset, and how to formulate ideal
solutions to meet actual needs with fluid adaptations.
Through three years of extensive field testing and customer studies, Guardhat realized
that true innovation would come from integrating thirty-party information with the KYRA
platform. Concurrently, the company made its device feature set highly adaptable with
plug and play modules, which are pre-certified to speed regulatory approval. This modular
structure allows for faster development and iteration, based on customer testing.
According to these strengths and strategies, Guardhat has achieved a competitive edge
ahead of other vendors and can maintain that differentiation by continuing to swiftly and
effectively develop intellectual property.
Local Intelligence with Federated Computing
In its patented process, Guardhat structures its system to operate much of the
computational processing on the device — meaning that devices can communicate
intelligently and deliver a more ‘human-centered’ performance. When connectivity
bandwidth is at a premium, as in many industrial applications, handling the automated
decision making and rules making protocols on the device, and combining with peer-to-
peer communication, enables greater local intelligence and more informed decision-
making. Rather than relaying to remote servers, nearby devices and sensors can inform
peers about hyper-accurate location exposures and experiences. System integrations and
localized intelligence improve safety; for example, static gas sensors exchanging
information directly with an on-helmet device regarding a proximity warning for dangerous
levels. Without relying on sending and receiving data and instructions from a centralized
mainframe via unreliable connections, Guardhat’s federated computing design
incorporates a built-in engine for processing safety and complex events. Moreover,
focusing on the individual and leveraging a federated methodology makes deployment
easier, and does not require major retrofits and rebuilds to the facility.

Conclusion
In an industrial setting, the myriad of sensors, connected technologies, and wearable
safety devices remain disjointed across formats, systems, and control hubs. The founders
of Guardhat understood this gap in the industry, and developed the underlying
technology, IoT platform, and visualization capabilities to specifically address last mile
connectivity. The Guardhat solution provides a vital human-centric design that accounts
for wearer location and status, while acting as a hub for communications, facility sensors
and connected assets. With an open and expansive third-party integration and resource
planning platform, Guardhat collects the unutilized Big Data and presents a digital
facsimile of the entire facility in a single pane of glass. With its federated computing
model, Guardhat enables intelligent peer-to-peer communication — unlocking never-
before-seen ROI, safety, cost, and productivity benefits. For its innovative technology,
end-to-end visibility, and responsive development, Guardhat earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2019
Company of the Year Award in the North America connected safety market.

Significance of Company of the Year
To receive the Company of the Year Award (i.e., to be recognized as a leader not only in
your industry, but among non-industry peers) requires a company to demonstrate
excellence in growth, innovation, and leadership. This excellence typically translates into
superior performance in three key areas—demand generation, brand development, and
competitive positioning—that serve as the foundation of a company’s future success and
prepare it to deliver on the 2 factors that define the Company of the Year Award:
Visionary Innovation and Performance, and Customer Impact).
Understanding Company of the Year
Driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all play critical roles in
delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however, must ideally be
complemented by an equally rigorous focus on Visionary Innovation and Performance to
enhance Customer Impact.

Key Benchmarking Criteria
For the Company of the Year Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated
each factor according to the criteria identified below.
Visionary Innovation & Performance
Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs
Requirement: Implementing a robust process to continuously unearth customers’ unmet
or under-served needs, and creating the products or solutions to address them effectively
Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends
Requirement: Incorporating long-range, macro-level scenarios into the innovation
strategy, thereby enabling “first-to-market” growth opportunity solutions
Criterion 3: Implementation of Best Practices
Requirement: Best-in-class strategy implementation characterized by processes, tools, or
activities that generate a consistent and repeatable level of success.
Criterion 4: Blue Ocean Strategy
Requirement: Strategic focus on creating a leadership position in a potentially
“uncontested” market space, manifested by stiff barriers to entry for competitors
Criterion 5: Financial Performance
Requirement: Strong overall business performance in terms of revenues, revenue growth,
operating margin, and other key financial metrics
Customer Impact
Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value
Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar
offerings in the market.
Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience
Requirement: Customers feel they are buying the most optimal solution that addresses
both their unique needs and their unique constraints.
Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience
Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service and have a
positive experience throughout the life of the product or service.
Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience
Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality.
Criterion 5: Brand Equity
Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty.

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching,
Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices
Frost & Sullivan analysts follow a 10-step process to evaluate award candidates and
assess their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the awards
are based on close adherence to this process.
STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT
1
Monitor,
target, and
screen
Identify award recipient
candidates from around the
world
 Conduct in-depth industry
research
 Identify emerging industries
 Scan multiple regions
Pipeline of candidates that
potentially meet all best
practices criteria
2
Perform
360-degree
research
Perform comprehensive,
360-degree research on all
candidates in the pipeline
 Interview thought leaders
and industry practitioners
 Assess candidates’ fit with
best practices criteria
 Rank all candidates
Matrix positioning of all
candidates’ performance
relative to one another
3
Invite
thought
leadership in
best
practices
Perform in-depth
examination of all candidates
 Confirm best practices
criteria
 Examine eligibility of all
candidates
 Identify any information gaps
Detailed profiles of all
ranked candidates
4
Initiate
research
director
review
Conduct an unbiased
evaluation of all candidate
profiles
 Brainstorm ranking options
 Invite multiple perspectives
on candidates’ performance
 Update candidate profiles
Final prioritization of all
eligible candidates and
companion best practices
positioning paper
5
Assemble
panel of
industry
experts
Present findings to an expert
panel of industry thought
leaders
 Share findings
 Strengthen cases for
candidate eligibility
 Prioritize candidates
Refined list of prioritized
award candidates
6
Conduct
global
industry
review
Build consensus on Award
candidates’ eligibility
 Hold global team meeting to
review all candidates
 Pressure-test fit with criteria
 Confirm inclusion of all
eligible candidates
Final list of eligible award
candidates, representing
success stories worldwide
7
Perform
quality check
Develop official award
consideration materials
 Perform final performance
benchmarking activities
 Write nominations
 Perform quality review
High-quality, accurate, and
creative presentation of
nominees’ successes
8
Reconnect
with panel of
industry
experts
Finalize the selection of the
best practices award
recipient
 Review analysis with panel
 Build consensus
 Select winner
Decision on which company
performs best against all
best practices criteria
9
Communicate
recognition
Inform award recipient of
recognition
 Announce award to the CEO
 Inspire the organization for
continued success
 Celebrate the recipient’s
performance
Announcement of award
and plan for how recipient
can use the award to
enhance the brand

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT
10
Take
strategic
action
Upon licensing, company
able to share award news
with stakeholders and
customers
 Coordinate media outreach
 Design a marketing plan
 Assess award’s role in
strategic planning
Widespread awareness of
recipient’s award status
among investors, media
personnel, and employees
The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best
Practices Awards
Research Methodology
Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research
methodology represents the analytical
rigor of the research process. It offers a
360-degree view of industry challenges,
trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of
Frost & Sullivan’s research methodologies.
Too often companies make important
growth decisions based on a narrow
understanding of their environment,
resulting in errors of both omission and
commission. Successful growth strategies
are founded on a thorough understanding
of market, technical, economic, financial,
customer, best practices, and demographic
analyses. The integration of these research
disciplines into the 360-degree research
methodology provides an evaluation
platform for benchmarking industry
participants and for identifying those performing at best-in-class levels.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, helps clients accelerate growth and
achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation, and leadership. The company's
Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's growth team with disciplined
research and best practices models to drive the generation, evaluation, and
implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages nearly 60 years
of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the
investment community from 45 offices on 6 continents. To join Frost & Sullivan’s Growth
Partnership, visit http://www.frost.com.
360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN
THE CHAOS

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