Centurion Solar - case study
Save Money
Remote controlling customer systems means no more travelling to remote sites to troubleshoot or fix them
Increase Customer Satisfaction
Every user is helped in real-time, ensuring the highest level of satisfaction from all customers
Save Time
Decrease the time spent trying to gain access to customer systems, more time to truly assist customers
Company
Centurion Solar is a South African company developing and deploying industry leading energy monitoring and control technologies with sophisticated analytics for solar panel systems, changing how energy is used throughout the home. Pretoria-based Centurion Solar was founded by Johan Booysen, who discovered there wasn’t a simple way to monitor the proper functioning of his newly installed solar systems.
Johan’s background in system architecture enabled him to build his own solution, using a Raspberry Pi and a USB cable. Originally intended purely for personal use, the Pi-powered monitoring system’s potential led to the creation of a now flourishing company. Centurion Solar has plans to expand exponentially over the next couple of years.
Challenge
Centurion Solar pride themselves in providing excellent customer service, but in order to do so, they required the ability to remotely log into each system sold to help their customers get the most out of their solar systems. This needed to be done securely, efficiently and with a low level of complexity for less technologically adept customers.
Prior to adopting a remote access solution, users would have to be guided to configure software and accounts themselves, then share the details with Centurion Solar support. They would spend countless hours just trying to access the system in the first place, before even getting to diagnose the actual system issues.
Solution
Before finding VNC® Connect, Centurion Solar tested several different solutions, including TeamViewer and AnyDesk. After putting all the software through its paces, VNC® Connect came out on top in every category. Johan Booysen, Founder of Centurion Solar has also been particularly impressed with the friendly service and the assistance provided by RealVNC®’s Sales Team, which made the purchasing and onboarding process particularly easy.
Since purchasing a Professional VNC® Connect subscription, Centurion Solar simply configure each new Raspberry Pi prior to sale, join it to their team, and send the invite to the customer. This means everything is already set up and configured by the time they open the box at home. Centurion Solar’s software is currently being used in over 15,000 systems spread across 27 countries, with more new users every week.
Having every new system going out installed with VNC® Connect allows them to provide support quickly and easily for customers no matter where they are, or how tech-savvy they are (or aren’t). The ability to have secure remote access to every Raspberry Pi system without the need to open firewalls or do any kind of port forwarding.
“We've gone from being in limp mode to overdrive in one easy step, using RealVNC® as the driving force to get us there.”
Johan Booysen
Founder
Future
Encouraged by their continuous success, Centurion Solar is currently working on expanding into India and Australia over the next 36 months. The business plans to increase their usage of VNC® Connect to match company growth and deal with the increasing customer demand, with a projected expansion of 200 licenses a month.
