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Today’s competitive market expects manufactures to be more consumer focused by introducing changes into their core supply chain processes. They are expected to embrace modern and smart technologies to create business value in delivering process cycles. Technology is ultimately an enabler to bring the business and customer needs alive. Understanding the overall supply chain in manufacturing with the consumer’s end goal in mind is key to applying technologies effectively. We must understand details of all the stakeholders involved, starting with suppliers, to the consumers, and including internal processes. Most mature manufacturing organizations with strong business process knowledge, understand the need for change. They are also introducing digital initiatives wherever possible to realize value. The digital initiatives must however, aim to create, capture and deliver on the needs of their end consumers. To realize the next industrial revolution faster, modern enterprise applications and technologies need to provide the best of breed business solutions in the form of a unified suite of digital platforms. This will allow consumers to leverage vast amounts of actionable data to bring performance into their business operations.
According to Gartner, more than 33% of global CIOs say that growth is a top priority for them. CIOs need to develop future ready strategies that can drive innovation in their manufacturing operations and help them adapt to market changes, to ensure growth.
Effective application of digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) or the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded analytics in the form of a modern business solution platform, can help optimize manufacturing supply chains. They can bring up to 30 -40% productivity improvement into the organization. According to Gartner, 36% of manufacturing enterprises realize above average business value from IT spending in digitization.
In one of the Forbes Insights surveys on Artificial Intelligence (AI), 44% of respondents from the automotive and manufacturing sectors classified AI as “highly important” to the manufacturing function in the next decade. IoT and ML usage in predictive maintenance eliminates a lot of presumptions as machines can report conditions accurately and automatically and keep records up-to-date. It also helps in reducing human errors in the overall supply chain operation and saves valuable time and resources of businesses, guaranteeing manufacturing performance.
There is no question that the manufacturing industry needs a holistic approach to digital transformation without compromising their core business processes. All while providing distinct value-additions to their end customers.
Enterprise Applications are built by taking the necessary consensus from the respective industry line of businesses (LOBs) of organizations across countries and regions. Over the years, it has standardized the functional business processes from the industry into the form of a readymade business solution that can be implemented quickly to bring business value. ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions contribute to the largest piece of the pie of the Enterprise Software market. The size of the global enterprise application market is estimated to be worth USD 259.51 billion by 2022, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc., registering a 7.8% CAGR during the forecast period. Whereas the ERP Software market itself is estimated to reach $78.4 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2019 to 2026 (Source: Allied Market Research). There is also an increase in demand for Enterprise Application solutions among small & medium sized enterprises and there are technological advancements in these solutions. Making them available to deploy as a software-as-a-service solution is a new wave that is expected to drive the growth of the Enterprise Software market globally. MarketandMarkets has estimated that the global cloud ERP market size is expected to grow from USD 45.3 billion in 2020 to USD 101.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.4% during the forecast period.
Cloud ERPs in manufacturing will certainly bring in the next wave of business growth. They carry the best of breed industry specific integrated business solutions and come with embedded digital technologies. These technologies can access huge data sets through their application platforms to derive better actionable insights and predict business outcomes to improve efficiency of supply chain operations. They also provide easy plug and play options to embrace any add-on applications to enhance the business functionality of the overall solution and increase supply chain visibility from material sourcing through vendors to their end customers by navigating through the entire supply chain.
As a manufacturer, if you want to deploy a business solution to jumpstart digital adoption across your supply chain and drive the next wave of growth by not compromising your core business processes, you have no reason not to consider a modern enterprise application solution in the form of cloud applications and platform solutions.