NGR's Blog

Cloud computing once was considered only for large enterprises. Learn what's driving more small and mid-sized firms to transition to a cloud network.

Does your organization view the cloud as technology for the future? Or a sophisticated networking and industrial computing prospect available only to large enterprises? It's time to rethink what's possible. Every manufacturer can confidently make the move to cloud-based computing.

This article explores the characteristics that enable a manufacturer to deploy a cloud network for storing, accessing, sharing and leveraging data from Internet-connected devices.

B2B marketing automation, if done right, is an efficient and cost-effective tactic for engaging your prospects and helping them move forward in their buying process; ultimately generating more of the qualified, sales-ready leads that your salespeople and channel partners need to meet your company’s sales, revenue and growth goals.

The bad news is that when it comes to implementing marketing automation for generating, nurturing and qualifying leads, many B2B marketers are daunted by the perceived complexity.

The good news? Putting marketing automation to work doesn’t have to be an overwhelming effort. You can start simply, building the sophistication of your marketing automation campaigns as you go.

I call it the Crawl, Walk, Run, Win Approach to Putting Marketing Automation to Work.

Consider this. You touch something hot and you immediately drop it or snap your hand from the heat source. It’s automatic, you do this so instantly that you don’t even think about it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is our wonderful nervous system at work which consists of your brain, spinal cord and nerves which work together so well that it feels instant or real time. It sensed the hot object in your hand and signaled your muscles to let it go subconsciously. Basic studies have tracked this process of “feeling pain” to see that some nerves transmit at over 320 KM/HR (or 200 MPH for my American friends). Quite amazing when you think about it.

One day after a dentist visit my mother (bless her) bought home some fish and chips for lunch while my mouth was still numb from the anesthetic. Two hours later I was in horrible pain because I had burned the top of mouth bad and chewed a hole in my tongue because I couldn’t feel the pain. My nervous system was blocked by the pain killers and I ended up doing some serious damage to my mouth. It occurred to me that this is what happens with manufacturing intelligence with it capturing events (both good and bad), transferring them via integration to a central place for viewing and actions. So as a machine starts producing bad parts, the quicker these events are captured, moved and analyzed the less impact of rework or scrap occurs. This is called the “feedback loop”.

It’s been called the fourth industrial revolution. Smart factories will change the manufacturing landscape around the world, heralding a new age of productivity, efficiency, responsiveness, and product customization. And serious manufacturing people—like CEOs and industry analysts—think the reality is not very far away.

The revolution began a few decades ago, when manufacturers started creating smart manufacturing cells, for the first time merging information technology with manufacturing technology in real-time, albeit on a small scale. Then, as the technology progressed, along came smart production lines, and then smart individual factories.

The supply chain management has been focusing on squeezing cost and improving operations for decades. In the 1980s, there was a lot of focus on just-in-time production, lean manufacturing and discrete systems. In the recent decade, the obsession about high quality goods, cost minimization and flawless distribution has been made possible by the advancement in technology.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, as a part of a broader spectrum of sensor-based technologies, has dramatically revolutionized the supply chain management. Basically RFID is simply an enabling technology that has the potential of helping retailers provide the right product at the right place at the right time, thus maximizing sales and profits. RFID provides the technology to identify uniquely each container, pallet, case and item being manufactured, shipped and sold, thus providing the building blocks for increased visibility throughout the supply chain.

Internet has revolutionized the way business is operated harnessing limitless opportunities to perform routine to critical organizational functions. Cloud Computing is a remarkable shift in IT industry, which enables virtually anyone for reliable, scalable and on demand robust IT as a Service solutions stacks. Platform as a Service is a cloud service offering which enables the development, deployment, integration and maintenance of key business applications without even buying the underlying backend architecture, on a convenient pay as you go model, where all these applications are hosted on the provider’s infrastructure and are entirely accessible via internet.

How do you show your potential subscribers the value of your products? Do you keep in touch with them throughout their buying cycle in a way that is both scalable and customized? Static web pages no longer work. Batch-and-blast emails treat everyone the same, unless you hire a team to parse out industry segments and content clicks. But a wide variety of platforms let you automate your marketing based on profile fields and activities.