The CEO who starts and ends his day on the camera dashboard
Ohi runs five warehouses for two-hour delivery. Founder Ben Jones says video is the first system he sets up at each new site.
Ben Jones starts and ends each day looking at all of his warehouses on one screen. He is the founder and CEO of Ohi, an instant-commerce company that runs small warehouses in metropolitan areas so direct-to-consumer brands can offer same-day delivery, with windows as short as two hours. Spot AI's published account lists it at five locations, headquartered in New York, and Jones is the only person quoted. What he describes is a management habit.
Spot AI allows me to get real-time visibility across my operations. I start and end my day looking at all my sites on Spot AI.
Someone else's cameras
Ohi moves into warehouses other people built, and moves out when the network needs to shift. Every site, Jones says, came with cameras already on the wall.
Each of our locations have different camera brands, usually pre-installed by the owner or previous occupant. As CEO, I have no easy way to get a comprehensive view of my operations and see how things are running.
Replacing that hardware in a building you may leave in a year is money spent on the landlord's asset. Spot AI's answer is that it plugs into whatever is installed, regardless of brand, with a setup it describes as two cables. Jones's team gets footage the same day a warehouse opens. At the most recent opening, in San Francisco, the account says the setup was directed remotely with no full-time employee on the ground.
Spot AI has been remarkably easy for my team to set-up. We can now get instant visibility into new locations we set up.
Day one
The line that explains the ordering of Jones's priorities is about time. He is quoted saying: "When we set up a new site, security is a must. But as we grow rapidly, we don't have weeks to get new cameras installed."
Hence the sentence Spot AI uses as its lead: "Spot AI is the first system we set up at a new location and we're looking forward to integrating Spot AI's technology across other sites as we expand." A company whose product is speed treats the camera system as infrastructure that has to be up on day one, alongside the network.
What he watches
Video walls show the same process at several sites side by side. Motion alerts let the team self-monitor the warehouse around the clock. Zone-based motion search traces where a package went, checks how staff are working, and diagnoses incidents. When Jones sees something amiss, the account says, he shares a clip with the warehouse manager on site.
Jones says: "Our success is dependent on being able to offer superior levels of service." The account's closing quote is in the same register: "We're now much better equipped to keep improving our operations and resolve issues for our customers."
The absence of a number
There is no percentage anywhere in this case study, no shrinkage figure and no incident count. It is one of Spot AI's older stories, and what it describes is a founder's routine with a dashboard.
Whether that routine survives growth past five sites is the question the case study leaves open. If you have grown past that number, what did you keep looking at every morning?