In the way professional services contribute value to process-intensive enterprises, a paradigm change is taking place. The time-honored standard of reactive, onsite maintenance and repair services for industrial organisations is swinging toward a more people-focused approach in response to the tremendous development in connected digital technology and IoT-based applications.
Customers collaborate with professional service teams to accomplish successful business objectives through the use of smart digital technology, which is implemented in conjunction with those trusted professionals.
Many manufacturers have discovered that embracing long-term digital service partnerships that deliver data-generated business intelligence is critical to helping them improve operational and financial performance while boosting their competitive edge as they embark on modernization initiatives to bring their operations up to Industry 4.0 levels.
There’s never been a better time for manufacturers to rethink their digital projects, given recent technical and market changes. Industry leaders may be amazed by how digital services for industrial automation have evolved to become fast, efficient, adaptable, scalable, and individualised, just as agile ways of working have become the standard.
Why now? The benefits of accessing collective wisdom
While every manufacturer’s business is different, they all confront the same challenge: how to use digital technology and improved connectivity to gain real-time insights into processes, merchandise, people, and partners.
In today’s commoditized competitive climate, access to richer and more timely data is frequently the key underlying any attempt to enhance the productivity of older industrial operations, thus inaction is not an option. However, according to a recent global poll by Deloitte, while 94 percent of executives in industrial organisations recognise the importance of such a digital transformation, only 14 percent are confidence in their company’s capacity to completely implement it.
The good news is that collaborative business ecosystems are already emerging to address the difficulties posed by increased digitization.
Partnering with OEM services professionals who are competent at merging complicated digital technologies into fully integrated solution platforms has yielded significant benefits for industrial firms all over the world. The ideal digital services collaboration should provide manufacturers with a variety of advantages, including:
- Lower costs, higher profits, and enhanced growth – Digital tools help to virtualize processes and infrastructure while giving organizations access to the real-time data and insights they need to boost efficiency and profitability across their operations.
- Empowering workers with smarter, more collaborative decision making – Employees gain the visibility and insight needed to reduce risk, improve operational and business decisions, and perform their daily tasks more effectively. These benefits come from merging predictive analytics with real-time control and safety system data, then sharing information across departments.
- Better agility and resilience – Optimizing manufacturing operations is key to ensuring enterprises have the flexibility to adapt to changing markets, supply chain fluctuations, and competitive disruption.
- Proactive issue identification – Asset-intensive industries, including those with distributed systems or remote assets, can attain major capital and operating costs reductions by implementing a remote monitoring program with advanced predictive maintenance capabilities.
Customized experiences are now possible thanks to new technology.
Cutting-edge providers can tailor and present individualised products that mix the specific services that meet their business’s demands and complement their staff’s skill sets in the new digital services ecosystem. Schneider Electric’s Customer FIRST Flex programme has the goal of providing support service solutions that are:
- Scalable – whether it’s on-site or remote services, preventative and corrective maintenance, or spare parts delivery, choose the services that meet current needs, with the option to change as business requirements evolve.
- Cost-efficient – services optimized to deliver on performance requirements, while meeting budget constraints.
- Digital – tools and consulting services to help accelerate digital transformation, whether your journey is just beginning, or well underway.
- Sustainable – with better control system visibility, energy conservation, and cost reduction initiatives can deliver improved results.
- Cyber secure – stringent cybersecurity best practices in line with global standards keep information safe and secure.
Make decisions informed by data and expertise
Extracting value and insight from ever-increasing quantities of data is fundamental to ensuring Connected Services deliver on the promise of increased efficiency and profitability.
Schneider Electric has specifically designed its digital service offerings to help customers extract the most value from their connected assets.
Expert engineers combine their proficiencies with cutting-edge technology to analyze data and proactively identify the intervention areas that can bring the most value to customers.
It is by empowering people to understand the profitability potential of their production assets that data can best be converted into business intelligence.
