- handbook
- Company
- Company
- Board & Investors
- Communications
- Decision making and project management
- Guides
- KPIs and OKRs
- principles
- Remote Work
- Security
- Asset Management Policy
- Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Policy
- Information Security Roles and Responsibilities
- Operations Security Policy
- Risk Management Policy
- Third-Party Risk Management Policy
- Human Resources Security Policy
- Incident Response Plan
- Cryptography Policy
- Secure Development Policy
- Access Control Policy
- Information Security Policy and Acceptable Use Policy
- Data Management Policy
- strategy
- values
- Operations
- Product
- Blueprints
- Feedback
- Market Segments
- Metrics
- Node-RED Dashboard
- Personas
- Pricing Principles
- Principles
- Strategy
- Versioning
- Engineering & Design Practices
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- Certified Nodes
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- FlowFuse for Education
- How we work
- Lead Generation
- Marketing - Website
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- Sales department
- Sales
# Personas
Personas are fictional characters that represent the different users we expect to interact with FlowFuse as a brand and/or platform. Personas are a generalized way of talking about the ideal target we are aiming to communicate with and design for.
Personas help us not only define our messaging and marketing delivery, but also our product. Keeping personas in mind allows us to use the correct language and make the best decisions to address their specific problems and pain points.
As outlined in our brand voice, FlowFuse serves as a trusted partner for industrial engineers and developers navigating digital transformation. We position ourselves as "the engineer's enabler — technical enough to be respected, accessible enough to be adopted." This approach ensures our communication is aligned, consistent, and memorable across all organizational levels.
Our personas are structured around three strategic layers that reflect the typical FlowFuse adoption journey, with each layer playing distinct roles in the decision-making process:
# Three-Layer Sales Structure
Layer 1 - Users (End-users & Advocates) FlowFuse serves as their reliable, technically-grounded partner for daily operational challenges.
- Peter Automation and Controls Engineer - Uses Node-RED, MQTT, and industrial protocols
- Sarah Process Engineer - Works with data and industrial processes
Layer 2 - Champions (Technical Influencers & Evaluators)
FlowFuse demonstrates value through practical, straightforward solutions that address real business needs.
- Steve Plant Engineer - Needs convincing through proven results and clear ROI
- Isabella IIoT Project Lead - IT/OT bridge seeking dependable platform for digital transformation
Layer 3 - Buyers (Economic Decision-Makers) FlowFuse provides transparent, enterprise-ready solutions with measurable impact on business outcomes.
- Paul Plant Manager - Final decision maker focused on operational efficiency and innovation
# Layer Interactions & Influence Flow
The personas influence each other in a structured flow that mirrors typical B2B technology adoption:
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Users → Champions: End-users like Peter and Sarah identify operational challenges and advocate for solutions to their engineering managers. Their hands-on experience and technical credibility make them powerful advocates for FlowFuse's capabilities.
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Champions → Buyers: Technical influencers like Steve and Isabella evaluate solutions, build business cases, and present recommendations to executive decision-makers. They translate technical benefits into business value propositions.
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Buyers ← → Champions: Decision-makers like Paul rely on champions for technical validation while providing budget authority and strategic direction. This bidirectional relationship ensures alignment between technical capabilities and business objectives.
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Cross-layer Communication: Users often directly influence buyers through demonstration of results and ROI, while buyers set constraints and requirements that flow down to champions and users.
# Sales Funnel Stages by Layer
Each persona layer engages with FlowFuse at different stages of the sales funnel:
Awareness Stage
- Users: Discover FlowFuse through technical communities, Node-RED forums, industrial automation conferences
- Champions: Learn about FlowFuse through industry publications, vendor evaluations, peer networks
- Buyers: Become aware through business publications, executive briefings, strategic planning sessions
Consideration Stage
- Users: Evaluate technical capabilities, test integrations, assess ease of implementation
- Champions: Analyze business impact, compare alternatives, build ROI calculations
- Buyers: Review strategic alignment, assess vendor stability, evaluate total cost of ownership
Decision Stage
- Users: Provide technical validation and implementation feedback
- Champions: Present business cases and recommendations to decision-makers
- Buyers: Make final purchasing decisions based on business value and risk assessment
# Marketing Materials by Layer
Each persona layer requires targeted content that addresses their specific needs and decision-making criteria:
Users (End-users & Advocates)
- Technical documentation and integration guides
- Video tutorials and how-to content
- Community forum discussions and peer testimonials
- Hands-on trial experiences and sandbox environments
- Technical webinars and training sessions
Champions (Technical Influencers & Evaluators)
- ROI calculators and business case templates
- Comparative analysis and competitive positioning
- Solution architecture diagrams and technical specifications
- Case studies demonstrating measurable business outcomes
- Proof-of-concept implementation guides
Buyers (Economic Decision-Makers)
- Executive briefings and strategic whitepapers
- Total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses
- Vendor stability and roadmap documentation
- Security and compliance certifications
- Customer success stories from similar organizations
# Persona Template
# Profile
- Name: Naming your Persona is very important to increase empathy with them. Having them named is shown to make relating to their situation easier to do, and result in better product decisions.
- Picture: What does the persona look like? Choose a realistic and believable picture.
- Age: Choose a realistic age for the persona, this can also be a range if needs be, but try to keep it fairly precise.
# Details
- Occupation: What is their professional occupation? This doesn't have to correlate directly to why they're a Persona, but can play a very important role defining them.
- Purchasing Role: Where in the hierarchy of a purchasing decision do they sit, and to what scale could we expect such a decision to bring in financially?
- Technical Skillset: This is a FlowFuse-specific characteristic we've introduced for our Personas. It's important as a low-code platform to consider technical skillsets, that developers or those in the technical industry such as ourselves may take for granted, and even how they've learned their technical skillset, should they have one.
- Node-RED Experience: Another FlowFuse-specific detail. This helps us frame the sales/marketing strategy for this Persona, and will also frame explanations of what FlowFuse is and does.
- Additional information: A catch-all for any other remarks or comments to be made for the persona.
# Behaviours
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Interests: What personal and professional interests does this person have?
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Motivations: Why does this persona do what they do? What drives them?
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Influences: Where do they get their opinions from? What sources of information influence their own decision making?
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Needs & Expectations: What does this persona need in their day-to-day life to help them? What are their baseline expectiations for what "good" or "valuable" looks like?
# Goals
What problem does the persona want to solve, or which benefit does the character seek? Why would the persona want to use or buy FlowFuse?
- Job To Be Done: In the context of the persona, what are they trying to achieve?
- Challenges: What are their regular blockers and pain points when trying to work towards their goals?
# Persona Profiles
# Paul, Plant Manager
- Responsible for the overall production and profit of the products
- Sets guidelines for investments and serves as the final decision-making authority
- Responsible for growth of the plant
- Ongoing investment planning and budget setting for new machines and new employees
- Wants the factory to run smoothly
- Wants to improve the economic and future situation of the plant
- Data & facts
- Conferences
- Network
- Easy access to reporting
- Transparency
- Creating an innovative factory
- Improve the economic situation
# Steve, Plant Engineer
- Responsible for the design, production, and maintenance of a line or facility
- Sets guidelines for mechanical design of a facility
- Responsible for identifying opportunities for increased production
- Ongoing investment planning and budget setting for new machines
- Prepares meaningful KPIs together with the production planner
- Wants the factory to run smoothly
- Downtime Reduction
- Data & facts
- Conferences
- Network
- Easy access to reporting
- Transparency
- Predictive Maintenance
- Downtime Reporting
- Process Visibility
# Sarah, Process Engineer
- Responsible for the design
- Identify process flow bottle necks
- Report on productivity and efficiency of a production line
- Identify quality problems and is the quality engineer if one isn't present
- Identifies meaningful KPIs and creates them
- Wants the factory to run smoothly
- Quality production
- Data & facts
- Industry specific Conferences
- Peers
- Automation and Controls Engineers
- Easy access to reporting
- Transparency
- Data Access
- Real Time Analytics
# Isabella, IIoT Project Lead
- Reports to Paul, but acts as strategic advisor for tech decisions.
- Definition of IT/OT architecture on machine, line, plant and global level
- Coordination and handover to Operations for operation of software components
- Define and implement connectivity of machines
- Interface between IT department and OT departments
- Deliver measurable business value through scalable technology
- Be a driver of digital transformation and IIoT maturity
- Reduce complexity across the tech stack
- See IIoT topics growing
- Conferences
- Podcasts
- Personal Network
- Tools that interacts with industrial equipment and can provide data to other software applications
- Clear, standards-compliant architecture documentation
- Easy way to visualize data
- Stable and high available software
- Identifying added value for production
- Establishing IIoT standards
# Peter, Automation and Controls Engineer
- Works alongside Sarah
- Management of a team responsible for planning, design, and programming of PLCs
- Conception, specification, and programming of Controls Systems
- Connection of the control systems to other systems and implementation of process adjustments
- Management of the commissioning of machines and production lines and controlling of compliance with software standards in the application
- Central contact for control technology
- Extract data from control systems and make available to enterprise
- Visibility into the production
- Enabling team member to solve own problems
- System Integrators
- PLC OEMs (Siemens, Rockwell, ABB, Beckhoff)
- Trainings
- Wants easy ways to provide PLC data to other systems
- Budget
- Time
- Identifying problems gives them work
# Common Use Cases
Based on the Personas, the following section describes the most relevant Use Cases that we identified in exchange with our customers. These Use Cases align with the Product Strategy.
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Data transformation As Peter, Automation and Controls Engineer, I want to connect, collect, and store data from several sources, so that I can analyze my data further and ensure it is accessible in a unified manner.
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Generate actionable insights As Peter, Automation and Controls Engineer and Sarah, Process Engineer, I want to visualize and analyze my data, so that I can generate actionable insights from my data.
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Enterprise Readiness As Paul, Plant Manager, I want a professional partner with seamless enterprise integration, security, and a reliable architecture, so that I can use Node-RED in corporate and production environments.