SmartIce

Overview

Ice House America is a preeminent manufacturer and operator of automated ice vending machines. As a leader in the industry, Ice House America has revolutionized the way small businesses and consumers purchase ice and water in bulk. Their primary product is a large, permanently installed vending machine that can supply fresh water by the jug and drop ice into bags filled on-site or bulk-vend into your own cooler. The SmartIce platform gave ice machine owners new tools and analytics to manage their business, putting IHA a cut above the rest.

The Problem

As the business grew and thousands of ice machines were positioned around the United States, there was a growing need to get real-time insights from machine activity. Ice House America was facing tremendous market pressure to provide a first-party OEM solution, and Web Ascender was brought in to make that happen. Our team spent a week in IHA’s headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida and their manufacturing facility in Moultrie, Georgia, where we learned more about their business and outlined the initial product features.

What We Did

• Application architecture and consulting services
• Database design and implementation
• Ruby on Rails application development
• iOS & Android mobile application development
• Amazon AWS (EC2 and RDS) system administration

Results

Ice House America saw a 100% return on their investment within 10 months. The new technology put both their vending machines and their software companion products ahead of the competition. Web Ascender’s Launch + Growth approach provides Ice House America with an ongoing partner to help them design, develop, and deploy new features to production within 2–4 weeks, giving them the ability to stay #1 in their industry.

Testimonial

“Web Ascender has transformed our business! From the very onset of the project where Ryan and his merry crew came to our factory and helped us outline the product vision to the ongoing support and suggestions on how to improve the product, WA has over delivered every step of the way. This area of our business has grown exponentially and our owners and operators love the ability to remotely manage their business and maximize their total profitability. It is too costly to have a key project go wrong, so go for the best and use Web Ascender.”

• Troy D., Ice House America CEO