Enterprise 2.0: The machine oil called collaboration

For a product to be made perfectly there is a big chain that goes before and after it reaches the consumer’s hands. Conceiving the idea, designing with pragmatic and cost-smart elements, applying the right platforms, corralling all stakeholder angles together at the right time and right way, sourcing precise inputs, devising optimal manufacturing processes, tapping with rigorous quality checks, flanking an apt service fabric around, and so on and so forth.

On-premise software definitely turned a fresh page for people and shop floors that were caught in manual, disparate, disconnected systems before. But automation and software-ising systems does not suffice anymore. The future has already arrived and it is about taking technology to a new level, squeezing its best powers in the most unimaginable ways.

For instance, two-tier ERP is increasingly becoming a norm than an exception, letting manufacturers fall in line with what corporate headquarters are wired on or what the front-end of the market – the big span of suppliers, distributors or even customers are using.

Cloud has enabled this two-tier skeleton without forcing heavy, un-sustainable spends, thanks to its sheer elasticity, any-time scalability and pay-per-use models.

This lets manufacturers rake in amazing levels of efficiencies and drastically improve aspects like procurement plans, material planning, supplier management, product development synchronization, resource provisioning, PLM, shipping strategies, logistics costs.  Mothballed ERP systems are not only being dusted afresh for new life stages with Cloud extensions but new technology interfaces that were born thanks to social networking, mobility, analytics and optimization technologies, are whitewashing all those archaic ways in which various stakeholders communicate and collaborate. What’s more remarkable is that this new enterprise 2.0 enabler is happening in the utmost real-time context and as per extremely agile standards possible.

A Mint Jutras 2013 ERP Solution Study pointed that the percentage of manufacturing companies saying that theu have access and regularly use ERP is increasing from 47% to 57% year over year. It noted that 21% of manufacturers there put mobile access to ERP as a “must have,” 38% went a level above and marked mobile access to business intelligence (BI) as a “must have” and further 32% desired access to BI from their chosen device (BYOD).

These trends are more pronounced in the way that companies are growing in a distributed fashion and the study understandably caught that 66% of manufacturers operate across multiple locations and the number of sites grows along with annual revenues.

Erstwhile and now anachronistic - on-premise software - alone can no longer fit the needs that this fast-paced, freshly-programmed world demands. Things are going to get unfamiliar and new technology mutations will continue to impact the world. Just think of the estimated 50 billion devices that will be connected to the Internet by 2020 and how factory floors, 3D printing answers, product design capabilities etc would be transformed. In fact, by 2019, 67 percent of software programmers will primarily be developing in the cloud, up from 18 percent today, an Evans Research prediction points.

On-premise is not going to ride into sunset for sure, given the significant investment of money, skills and time it has gulped. But Cloud, thankfully, allows for ways to extend its impact and possibilities, specially in the new era of technology and an entirely new way of manufacturing with never-before stakeholder collaboration and strategic paradigms as we know it.

A brilliant instance on how the collaborative power of the cloud can be leveraged can be gauged by how Mahindra & Mahindra, India's leading automotive company, did it. Considering that its sales team is constantly churning out orders for a whole range of cars, the company decided to move to the next level of automation at dealership level. The auto major introduced over 850 Windows operating system-based Acer Tablets for its sales force, thereby giving the sales team flexibility to interact with customers at a place of their choice. The solution not only demonstrates the vehicle features interactively but also captures customer enquiry and test drive feedback. All the information so collected is dynamically updated with the Dealer Management System thereby speeding the buying decision in many cases.  In this way, Mahindra & Mahindra were able to take the collaboration level. Thus, cloud computing can truly enhance the collaboration and so the productivity of the organization by several notches.  To achieve breakneck speeds and avoid backbreaking processes, it is important to recognize and wield the power of Cloud. For it is no longer replacing on-premise software but is going a step ahead and helping optimize it like never before.