Today’s top-performing manufacturers have a common attribute: they operate as a Digital Master
What is the best argument for digital transformation? Profit. Companies that turn technology into business transformation have more efficient revenue generation and better profitability.
That’s the view of Dr. Didier Bonnet, Senior Vice President of Capgemini Worldwide, and the keynote speaker at iBase-t’s recent Excelerate Innovate 2020 web event that introduced the new Solumina iSeries platform. His research of over 400 different organizations and their key financial indicators revealed that a Digital Master is more profitable, by as much as 50 percent more than the laggards.
What Makes a Digital Master?
Dr. Bonnet explained that the key is how a Digital Master uses technology to transform the customer experience, operational processes, and business models. Success depends more on how companies orchestrate their digital transformation than on which specific technologies and features they choose.
According to Dr. Bonnet, Digital Masters focus on three key, business-oriented goals:
- Customer experience: Creating a more direct connection to clients then leads to many other benefits, such as creating new opportunities for service, support, and development— including monitoring their products while in use.
- Connected operations: Bringing together the IT and business sides of the company and engaging employees to make this vision a reality, a Digital Master connects and enables workers at every level in the organization, from executives to frontline workers.
- Business models: Equipping themselves with the modifications they need to excel in a platform economy – and having the ability to quickly adapt as often as needed – empowered a Digital Master to out-perform at almost all economic and social activity that takes place within a technological framework.
The most important aspect is that they treat digital transformation in manufacturing as a business project, not as a technology project. They combine people, processes, and technology to create holistic, digital ecosystems of operations and then remove the barriers between departments. They stay focused on the overall goal of using digital transformation to increase an enterprise’s resilience and profitability.
If you are interested in listening to Dr. Bonnet’s presentation, you can watch what iBase-t customers viewed at our business conference.
Why are Digital Masters so Much More Profitable?
Dr. Bonnet cites an IoT architecture as driving modern industrial growth. A Digital Master is riding the wave instead of getting swept underneath.
For example, these companies are using sensors to capture machine feed data directly to their analytics engines to isolate issues and reduce downtime. They use predictive analysis and “what-if” scenarios that can enhance their ability to anticipate things like future customer needs and preferences. They expand their after-sales or product support capabilities to enhance future R&D that results in attracting and retaining more customers. Workers connect digitally to the rest of the enterprise directly through web applications that bring the company together in one space, using devices that span across hundreds of countries through secure portals.
The bottom line is that a Digital Master is not only invested in the right technologies but is also harnessing technology with the vision to streamline production and connect employees. This is why they are having a huge success.
The Next Few Years
At the exponential rate that it is going now, digitalization will continue to rapidly change how we operate. Already today, the top performers are the companies that master digital technology and use it to enhance their customer experience, operations, and business models. The gap between the masters and all the rest will only get wider in the next few years.
The good news is that the digital technology that manufacturers need is already available – and has been for a few years now. What has changed is an elevated recognition of its importance today, as validated by the higher profitability now possible. No longer is “going digital” just a “nice-to-have” investment. If you aren’t on the road to becoming a Digital Master yet, you are losing out on profitability. Now would be a good time to start.
