8-minute video
The manufacturing sector is in the midst of its biggest transformation to date, the shift from the industrial to the information economy.
From quality control to MRP, from logistics to customer experience, big data is revitalizing and revolutionizing the way manufacturers do business. In this short video, we talk about how your company can use analytics and intelligence systems to gain a 360-degree view of your customer, the back office, and the shop floor.
This episode continues our series of discussions around the 10 Best Practices for Digital Transformation.
Have a question you’d like answered?
Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll talk through it on a future episode!
What's the ROI? Just six months after implementing their digital transformation efforts, luxury textile manufacturer Matouk saw a 233% return on their investments.
Transcript: From the shop floor to customer experience, data drives manufacturing
Jessica: Hi and thanks for joining us for another Q&A Friday, a regular series where we chat about issues facing manufacturing companies in the new world of Industry 4.0. I'm Jessica Vodden, a team member here at Mountain Point, and I'm joined by Andrew Rieser, our president and co-founder. Hey, Andrew.
Andrew: Hey Jess, happy Friday.
Jessica: You too. Hey, so, I've been talking to you a lot over the past few weeks. We've been walking through, sort of step by step, our 10-step guide for best practices in managing digital transformation projects. For those of you who've been following along, you probably already know you can find that on our blog, but if you're new, definitely check it out. Today we're going to talk about the importance of really digging into your data and how data plays a role in modernizing your organization and the power of data for your business. So, Andrew, I'm gonna turn it over to you. I know this is one of your favorite topics so I'm gonna let you just kick it off. Why focus on data?
Andrew: Yeah. I think data touches every aspect of everything that we're talking about in this series. So if you reflect back on some of the other topics that we discussed, there's always a data element to that. That's setting KPIs, understanding your processes and baselineing your processes so that you can measure continuous improvement. But the underlying theme across a lot of what we're talking about stems from your data or lack thereof in some cases. So I think it's a very important part of digital transformation and I think that a lot of the organizations that we are engaging with, especially in this manufacturing and industrial space, there is always gonna be a continuous evolution of data, whether that's through organizations that they're growth strategy is acquisitions. We deal with a lot of manufacturers that have a private equity element to that where these roll-up strategies are occurring and the growth of the business is fueled by acquisitions of complimentary businesses that get plugged-in together. And so when you think about those they inevitably bring challenges in and of itself around all these aspects that we're talking, so how do you integrate and roll-up these organizations so that you have access and visibility into data, not only at the top level but across all these different business processes that we're talking about. And then you also just have the natural evolution of data in and of itself with smart devices and smartphones and all of these key touchpoints that are now being tracked through these modern systems and engagements. There is a plethora of data, and being able to sanitize that and put a plan in place to extract out what really is valuable, I think the organizations that are able to do that and then build processes around that are gonna be the ones that thrive in this Industry 4.0 world.
Jessica: Absolutely. So, one of the things that we've talked about a lot in the past is that, even though there's definitely an efficiency component to undertaking a digital transformation. Hopefully if you're redoing your business processes, investing in this new technology, you're going to do things more efficiently. But companies that really thrive as a result of these changes are those that are really focusing on adding value to their customers. So tell me a little bit about how data can aid companies in doing that.
Andrew: When you think about the amount of data that these organizations are capturing around their customers, around their products, all that should enhance the customer journey that we talk about and create the business processes around those four tenants that we describe in this new Industry 4.0 servitization world, we talked about that in a previous discussion. But I think data fuels the fire across those four tenants of Immediacy, Personalization, Anticipation, and then the Consistency of that overall engagement with the customer.
Jessica: Yeah, and I think one of the things that we really talk about, when we talk about the value of moving to a manufacturing cloud platform for an omnichannel system, is this ability to gain insight across your entire company. And I think that you kind of referenced this when you were talking about the mergers and acquisitions piece. Being able to unify these new additions to your business and understand what's happening across every level is so important these days. So tell me a little bit about how you go about integrating that, what's the value that companies find, and what are some pitfalls to avoid.
Andrew: So, I think a reoccurring theme that we see with a lot of the mid-market to enterprise customers in this manufacturing space that fit that profile that we talked about is I'd say 9 out of 10 have a priority for master data management, just a data governance strategy as a whole. So they realize that they've got these various systems that either came in through acquisition or just evolved over time as the business grew. And I think that really identifying how to aggregate that data and more importantly measure that data is very high on the priority list of a lot of these organizations. So orders are orders but orders may be defined in a system of record one differently than how it's defined in a system of record two, and these various ERP systems may have the same customer in them as well, so really figuring out how to connect the dots across all these different systems and aggregate that data so that you get the full picture, that 360-degree view of that customer is what is valuable.
Jessica: Absolutely. And I think that's one way that Mountain Point, it seems to me, really adds value. It's being able to identify all of those data points and figure out where they match up, where there are conflicts, and bring everything together in one unified system. And that's also the power of the Salesforce platform and some of the cloud ERP solutions that we promote and some of our integration partners. So definitely the technology is there but knowing how to put it all together is crucial.
Andrew: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think there is not a one-size-fits-all plan of attack for an organization. So leveraging our experience and how we solve these problems for other customers I think really is invaluable to some of these prospects and existing customers that we're starting to engage with because they all have similar challenges but it's really figuring out the right approach and the right set of priorities to focus on is where we come in, to help set the stage for that and create that roadmap for success.
Jessica: Great. Well, for those of you listening, be sure to tune in next time because we're gonna talk about how you can leverage your data and unify your data to really move from just a system of record to a true system of engagement where you have a complete picture of your company and your customer and your supply chain and are really managing those relationships. If you have any questions that you would like us to answer on future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us. We're always happy to hear from you. And Andrew, as always, thanks again, and looking forward to talking to you next time.
Andrew: Thank you, Jess.
What's the ROI? Just six months after implementing their digital transformation efforts, luxury textile manufacturer Matouk saw a 233% return on their investments.