Under Control
From aiding companies in developing their energy management and sustainability strategies to executing them through a turnkey program of equipment installation, project management and continual operation and maintenance, Novar provides an all-encompassing suite of products and services that are unrivaled in its industry. This leads to quick returns on investments and low lifecycle costs, which ultimately saves customers billions of dollars, President and CEO Dean Lindstrom asserts.
That's why top retailers choose Novar, he says. The company specializes in serving major restaurant chains, supermarkets, convenience stores, telecommunications sites, theaters and financial institutions with multiple stores or locations over a large geographical footprint. "Our only business is helping people of those industries operate their enterprise more effectively," Lindstrom states. "We typically engage with upper-level executives in high-level business discussions to fully understand the big business issues they are dealing with."
Novar addresses not just energy management and controls, but also issues relating to operational effectiveness such as how internal and external labor is used to support a client's physical assets. It also can tackle business improvement matters, such as helping clients establish a uniform shopping environment across hundreds or thousands of the customer's sites by ensuring the lighting, temperature and humidity levels are consistent.
Each site is connected to either the customer's corporate headquarters or to Novar's operations center (NOC) in Cleveland. "Some of our very large customers will have their own internal NOC that we help support and, in some cases, provide the people resources to help them run that," Lindstrom says. "Our goal is to know as much or more about a customer's business than they do so we can help them solve the big business issues as efficiently as possible."
Innovative new offerings
Energy efficiency has been at the core of Novar's business since day 1, Lindstrom maintains. "Energy efficiency goes in vogue, then it goes out, and then it comes back in," he remarks. "But that's something that we've always done. The way we look at it is energy efficiency is good business. Even as building technology changes and improves, we are looking at what we can do to build upon those developments in the overall building industry."
Novar has been at the forefront of the smart grid movement taking the electrical utility industry by storm. According to Lindstrom, the company has invested in open automated demand response technologies and continues to seek innovative ways to control energy consumption in thousands of buildings simultaneously on a real-time basis "so there is always an equilibrium of supply and demand, which is how the electric works when you boil it all down," Lindstrom says.
"Another thing we're looking at from a technology perspective are mobile applications where we can bring more information to individual users in a real-time fashion," Lindstrom continues. "I think we're doing a good job of trying to bridge a lot of things happening in the personal computing and personal communication arena, and bringing that into a business environment to where it helps businesses operate more effectively."
The company recently launched an information management and energy portal for the benefit of its clients. "What we're trying to do is not only identify where problems in their store portfolio lie, but predict when and where problems will occur, monetize that and let a customer know what it will cost them if they don't take care of a particular issue," Lindstrom explains.