As a engineering solutions company with over 30 years’ experience in the real-time space, we’re witnessing more and more manufacturers looking to go digital. Companies from all industries are feeling immense pressure to move towards digital transformation to remain competitive or else be disrupted. It’s no longer a case of “if”, but “when” for organizations, thus prompting many questions on how to get started on a digital journey. However, studies has shown that over eighty percent of digital transformation efforts fail. You might be asking:

• What are some of the common challenges with a digital transformation?
• What are some critical success factors manufacturers should address?
• What value do system integrators bring to a digital transformation journey?

Stephanie Mikelbrencis and Steve Sangster join Erik Walenza of IoT ONE for their Industrial IoT Spotlight Podcast to answer these questions and outline 3 key factors for a successful digital transformation.

Listen to the podcast below:

Key Takeaways:

• Real-time solutions are mission critical regardless of whichever layer it is in. The solutions have to work; they are in the operations and control levels and they are controlling the operations. Real-time solutions bring together the product lifecycle, automation, and software realms.
• The major problem most clients are facing is the inability to define and support digital transformation.
• “Digital” is commonly used as a catch-all term to describe all the integration needed to address typical challenges such as efficiency and supply chain coordination.
• For each individual problem, different technologies could be considered and implemented. However, it is difficult to select which technology to use based on technical specifications only.
• In reality, the existing infrastructure is not adequate. For example, there may be a mismatch of technology between the various acquisitions, businesses, and divisions that a company has.
• Solution providers can take a multi-disciplinary approach combining consulting and workflow processes to help the client define and understand the scope of work.
• It is not easy to understand and translate business requirements into technical software requirements. Demonstrating software or business processes using a “Day-in-the-Life” approach, so that each party can understand the requirements in their own vocabulary, facilitates the alignment of business and technical requirements.
• It is crucial to marry the business and the technology for successful digital transformation. Three factors are key:

1) The benefits of the initiative should be clearly defined, and used to create the scope of work.

2) Executive buy-in is crucial to motivate people to use digital technologies. The use of digital technologies creates a channel for people to see the value created by themselves.

3) Value must be created quickly and tracking must be consistent, so that customers do not need to wait to see value and the possibly of project abandonment is reduced.

Interested in learning more about the digital journey?

Check out our 5-part series on Critical Success Factors for the Digital Journey, or contact us to discover how Brock Solutions can help you along your digital transformation.