There’s a question that’s continually on the minds of executives across the manufacturing sector: Are we doing everything we can to serve our customers’ needs? Given the massive impact digital transformation is having on our industry, these needs are evolving at great pace and so the strategies required to satisfy them must be dynamic in nature.
Delivering digital transformation to end-user customers requires an approach that may feel unfamiliar – even uncomfortable – for many businesses, especially those still tied to a more conventional sales and customer service playbook. As they remodel from a one-to-one relationship with customers to an ecosystem-based approach, involving multiple partners working together towards a common goal, it becomes apparent that the sum of the many vastly outweighs its individual parts.
From the customer perspective, many end-user companies are still somewhere on the continuum of digital transformation, seeking to define the systems and processes necessary to support modern Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies and a holistic, digital-centric approach to manufacturing. The use cases for IIoT extend across the conventional factory environment, bringing opportunities for greater flexibility, productivity, and collaboration in areas such as analytics, operations management, and production data.
By combining expertise and collaborating on shared goals, a partner network consisting of OEMs, system integrators, authorized distributors and technology partners is better placed to provide the support required to help end users deliver on their goal of securely connecting people, processes, and technologies.