03: Digital Transformation In The Manufacturing Industry

Kris: As a former leader in a global manufacturing organization responsible for growing equipment and aftermarket sales, and now a leader of a digital eCommerce company, I am often reminded how much things have changed in just the past twenty years. I mean, I can remember when I was so excited to get a Blackberry phone (remember those?) so that when I was traveling to remote mining areas and arrived at my hotel, I wouldn’t have to hook up my laptop to the dial-up hotel internet connection just to check my emails to make sure I didn’t miss anything important before going in to visit my customer the next day. It was so much faster to check them from my Blackberry, and for me, this was roughly 2007.Fast forward to today, now if a manufacturer were to roll out an eCommerce solution like Equip, if I were still that same sales leader visiting my customer, I would be able to stand next to their machine in the pit and pull up full product bills of materials, identify the products from a 3D interactive drawing, add them to a shopping cart and send them a quotation all from a smartphone or tablet. The customer experience opportunities are incredibly different today for those manufacturers who are ready to make the leap into digital self-service. And this is just one example of the type of digital services available. This takes us to today’s topic - Manufacturing and Digital Transformation where we’re going to talk about manufacturers and their journey toward digital transformation.Kris: Let’s get into it. To set the stage, Erin and Lori, I would like to hear how each of you define digital transformation for the manufacturing industry?Erin: One thing it always goes back to his business goals. Your business goals should define your approach to digital transformation. In manufacturing, I see a couple of things that define digital transformation. The first is digital transformation as cultural transformation. So opening the business culture to digital tools, be in sales, operations production is a cultural change. And so the digital transformation has an impact on everyone, and how they identify as part of the organization. The next component of digital transformation is maintenance or growth strategy for your business. So tools like eCommerce, ERP, automation are becoming sort of the oxygen of all businesses, and manufacturing is no different. So to breathe, to grow, it can't be ignored, digital transformation is going to be foundational.Lori: I resonate with everything you said, and especially the cultural component because regardless of any transformation that you are incorporating into your business, you've got to get everyone on board and it's sometimes very challenging to do that if this is the way we've always been doing it for the last 40 years and you're trying to teach an old dog new tricks. I like to compare it to what manufacturing has been doing already with regards to automation, robotics, and creating efficiencies in their business, I think it's no different when you're looking at other segments of the business such as marketing, sales, and the communications and that relationship and that nurturing and it's just taking that transformation or that evolution of what's happening, and applying it to different segments of the business. You mentioned ERP systems, which are taking all elements of your business and combining them into one extremely useful digital tool and resource. But the critical component of that is the adoption of getting all components together and then getting all of the business on board with how to use that component. If you're looking at marketing automation, you need the sales and the marketing team working together on the same page and it's all about maximizing the relationships. COVID taught us real quickly that you can have relationships that aren't in person shaking...