Manufacturing intelligent services

We highlight a trend toward value-added services as a means for medium-sized manufacturers to drive innovation.

When you're a manufacturer on a slim budget, it's not easy to muster up the courage to innovate. When product demand begins to decline, however, innovation becomes a necessity. In an effort to survive organisations are seeking ways to commercialise successful innovations quickly. In some cases, the challenge has led medium-sized manufacturers to pursue a strategy called 'servitisation'. It is no quick journey to success, but research insight lends credence to the idea.

To 'servitise' means to combine value-added services with products that deliver additional capabilities to customers on an ongoing, 'pay as you go' basis. If, like other manufacturing companies, you're eager to pump all your innovative forces into generating income and saving money, then you might want to take note of the term, 'servitisation'. Even if you're not interested in the jargon, it's worth considering its essence: the shift from a focus on product to service.

Winning BIG with Self-Service BI

Experts indicate that midsized organisations can win BIG by outsourcing business intelligence to a self-service provider in the Cloud.

Business Intelligence has long been considered a challenge for midsized organisations. With costly systems overburdening IT departments, there is a failure to focus on the changing needs of business users. New business intelligence services in the Cloud are inviting IT departments to outsource their biggest data challenges to data specialists who can deliver a single version of the truth to multiple business users, on demand.

Keeping your job in the technology race

Creativity and social intelligence will be needed to adapt to an increasingly automated and unequal world.

If you hate chores, then Roomba's suggestion, 'Let a robot do your dirty work' may strike you as a welcome solution. From automated vacuum cleaners to robots that wash windows and mow lawns, accelerating automation is not only eliminating your time-wasting chores, but your jobs. How do you plan to keep yours?