Always keeping a rigid hold of the production line security is a no-brainer. But it may prove a challenge for the concurrent need to redefine the company’s IT infrastructure. However, when done right, this balancing act will meet your customers' purchasing demands and keep your business safe, agile, and technologically up to date.
The industrial products industry is characterized by global players with large-scale production facilities. In this line of business, the process of purchasing goods is heavily influenced by B2C buying patterns. Thus, an intelligent customer journey is key. Logistics is a factor that is both costly and has a tremendous effect on the customer experience. No one wants to wait too long to receive your product.
The buying process must be smooth and preferably accompanied by an intuitive web interface that takes care of all questions related to the purchase. Thus, companies that pinpoint the customer journey and align it with the lifecycle management of the business will be preferred by customers.
Transforming digitally is about knowing what you do best
As in other industries, AI and digital transformation is high on the agenda in the industry of industrial products. But the reality is that businesses with large production facilities often have many legacy IT systems that take up a lot of resources – not leaving much time to explore new digital opportunities. Moving to centralize IT infrastructure can help you transform the legacy IT and implement new IT systems that will further strengthen the security of your production line.
We see a trend in companies wanting to strengthen their businesses through digital transformation to create intelligent manufacturing. What these companies have realized is that obtaining the best results does not mean doing everything themselves. By outsourcing standard IT tasks, they free up time and resources for more specialized IT tasks that can leverage the business and drive change.
Transforming giants by transforming their IT
When talking about digital transformation in the industrial products industry, you are really talking about transforming giants that are not very agile in the first place. It takes finesse, expert knowledge, and a good portion of stamina to execute this type of digital transformation while keeping the business running, securing production and data, and saying goodbye to legacy IT.
However, the untapped potential of your data is massive and worth the effort. It holds the key to intelligent manufacturing where AI and other technological advances can transform the way you do business. By creating a coherent data model, you can make your data available across systems. Congregating your data from CRM, ERP, HR, production and various other systems makes it possible to carry out analyses and – among other things – capture the individual steps of the customer journey, thus allowing you to identify areas to improve and thereby enhance your customer satisfaction.
When you combine your data with productivity apps and intelligent cloud services, your factory setup becomes more agile and easier to adapt to new innovative ways of working. And by further adding intelligent supply chain planning and execution you can improve the service resilience and profitability.
Not everything belongs in the cloud
Naturally, keeping production safe and running is the focal point of any manufacturing company. Production is often dependent on older legacy systems that take a while to transform. When it comes to the aspect of security, moving all IT systems to the cloud may not always be the best option depending on your production setup.
At NNIT we are ready to advise you about the benefits of a hybrid setup that combines the cloud and your chosen on-premise solutions. With our experience on how to drive a lean production we make sure that safety is on point in both the physical production process and from a technological perspective. Together we develop the strategy for your digital transformation with a focus on strengthening your agility and improving the customer journey by unlocking the potential your data holds.
