Is your manufacturing business pushing to develop a digital transformation strategy? Are you taking the first steps toward deploying your digital transformation strategy? Do you hope to have a digital transformation strategy in place by this time next year? Do you have digital transformation on your radar?
If so, keep these three things in mind.
Are you preparing to deploy a digital transformation strategy at your manufacturing business right now – or soon? In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, holding onto old processes, siloed systems, and yesterday’s way of thinking will make it increasingly difficult for you to compete.
Change is necessary to ensure your products, services, and processes are relevant in the modern digital world. Whether growth for your business means expanding into new geographies, developing new products, or differentiating the customer experience, you need to develop the organizational capabilities to make that vision a reality.
More importantly, you must collaborate across the company to effectively prepare your business to act upon your growth strategies. When setting sights on deploying a digital transformation strategy, keep three critical steps in mind.
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Clik here to view.Invest Technology Smart
Investing in new and innovative technologies is important, but the key is investing in technology that adds strategic value for your business. As many as 88 percent of manufacturers plan to invest significantly in technology in the next year, but high-growth companies invest where it counts. Top investment priorities for manufacturers in the next 12 months include inventory management, cloud, Big Data, and mobile. This highlights a clear move toward digital technologies that will provide the level of visibility and insight required to define a data-driven strategic vision, as well as those that enable the collaboration necessary to realize that strategy.
Invest In Cloud
In particular, interest in cloud-based ERP has soared in recent years, growing from 23 percent to 59 percent between 2009 and 2016—perhaps explained by the citing of cloud-based technologies
as the number one enabler of companywide collaboration. While traditional ERP systems offer the capability to manage complex orders and inventory, cloud-based systems can enhance real-time visibility into customer orders, supplier performance, and global manufacturing operations. Moving on-premises systems to the cloud helps simplify and expedite collaboration—capabilities that may be extended upstream to suppliers or downstream to customers, enhancing the manufacturer’s view of the entire value chain. In real terms, this means giving your employees access to the information they need to do their jobs, any time, any place, from any device.
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Clik here to view.Turn Insight Into Action
Investing in technology alone isn’t enough to drive your digital transformation. You need the people, processes, and culture to empower your business and foster change. You need the ability to identify opportunities both within and outside your organization, and you need an unwavering focus on the customer. To realize your digital transformation strategy, you need individuals who embrace change and are committed to realizing that vision. Leaders and employees must create a culture conducive to change. Align new technologies with a clear transformation strategy and take steps from the start to communicate your vision and gain employee buy-in.
Make no mistake! How you manage change is critical—and you should ensure you have leaders with the right mindset and capabilities to lead digital transformation. What’s more, you need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your current staff. Do they possess the skills to follow through on your digital strategy? Do you need staff with different skills, and will you need to recruit or train them? Manufacturers are looking more and more towards the next-generation workforce—those who recognize where the industry is headed and possess the skills to manage innovative, cloud-based mobile solutions. Alternatively, you need to consider the cost of training existing employees and develop a digitally enabled workforce.