What Does Digital Transformation Mean in Manufacturing?

Manufacturing and B2B businesses are rethinking their business models and building digital sales and marketing capabilities amid shifting buying behaviour. Conventional sales must move online, creating the need for digital transformation.

Business outcomes of digital transformation initiatives for manufacturers

Improved connectivity between assets
Improved processes and reduced costs
Creating a better customer experience

Digital transformation in manufacturing means enhancing traditional manufacturing processes, products, and workforce with digital technologies, such as automation software, ecommerce, sensors, industrial robots, and more. - OroCommerce

Customer expectations and solving customer pain points are still the main drivers for digital transformation within manufacturing and B2B companies. Recent research shows that 65% of B2B buyers prefer to research products online, and 86% prefer to reorder online instead of speaking to a sales representative. Building those digital sales channels requires massive buy-in and a clear understanding of the operational impact when implementing those tools.

The challenges of digital transformation initiatives in manufacturing

Getting everyone on board

From the CEO to the employees on the production floor, everyone needs to know why there needs to be a digital transformation within the company, how it affects them, and how it improves the business. Start the digital transformation conversation early with your key stakeholders. These conversations will get your entire team on board and ensure project success.

Understanding operations impact and minimizing disruptions

The road to digital transformation is not easy. Couchbase found that 90% of projects failed to deliver as promised, could not deliver beyond minor improvements, or outright flopped. Robust technical assessments may have helped save those projects. A strong discovery and strategy phase, complete with expert technical analysis, ensures that the development plan you come up with is comprehensive. The more complete your roadmap is, the less downtime you will see on the production, fulfillment or customer service fronts.

Budget and resource limitations

Digital transformation is not a quick process. It is an evolution, and evolutions take time, money and other resources. It is critical to be sensitive to monetary, human and physical restrictions. Therefore, we feel it is best to take an Agile development approach. This project management style allows digital transformation projects to get to market as quickly as possible and maintain an orderly process of continuous delivery.

Benefits of a digital transformation in manufacturing

Improved connectivity between assets

Improved connectivity between a manufacturer's digital assets improves efficiency and operational resiliency. Systems of record should not live in a silo. Digital transformation is about optimizing data usage in operations so that manufacturers can utilize data more effectively – feeding it to their B2B ecommerce, ERP, CRM, finance, warehousing systems, and more.

Improved processes and reduced costs

Process improvements through automation and connected systems integration are among the best business outcomes of digital transformation for manufacturing; breaking down all business processes and identifying any inefficiencies increases overall process improvement and productivity, reducing cost and improving profits.

Creating a better customer experience

It is no longer a secret that the up-and-coming B2B and manufacturing buyers expect a digital customer experience. Manufacturers can improve customer satisfaction and provide better value by launching a B2B ecommerce platform with separate portals for regions, brands or clients. By connecting the right ecommerce platform to their operational assets, manufacturers can use sales data to accurately predict customer demand cycles, allowing them to adjust production accordingly.

Further, digital transformation allows manufacturing and B2B businesses to rethink their sales approach and adopt digital sales and marketing capabilities to make their sales funnel future-proof. This graphic from PwC shows exactly how manufacturers can build the kind of digital experience that customers now expect.

PwC - B2B & Manufacturing sales digital transformation

Conclusion

Companies have clear incentives to embrace digital transformation despite the challenges involved in starting a development path toward digital sales channels and marketing assets. Building digital channels for B2B, B2C, or even D2C will satisfy multiple key business objectives: open up new revenue opportunities, lower the cost-to-serve, increase value for customers, expand customer base and increase customer loyalty. These help manufacturers gain a significant competitive advantage through digital transformation.

Ready to talk digital transformation?

If you are ready to start your digital transformation, our Acro Commerce team is eager to talk and guide you through the process. Fill out the contact form below to start your journey today.