Industrial Automation Magazine India

Business leaders are now heavily investing in digitalisation

Published on : Thursday 12-08-2021

Raj Ravuri, Director, Industry Advisor-Manufacturing, Salesforce India.

Is the manufacturing sector in general lagging in embracing digital transformation? How much of it can be attributed to legacy issues?
For decades, manufacturers competed on the ability to design, build, and efficiently distribute the best product into the hands of their customers. Today, Covid-19 is changing everything from how manufacturers manage their operations, bringing their workforce back to work to how they conduct business with their partners and customers. This in turn is forcing a ‘digital imperative’ in which every business process must be transformed from the ‘old school’ ways of working to a new, digital-first world.
 
While it goes without saying that the pandemic has forever changed the way we work across sectors, the manufacturing industry in particular has undergone a significant shift to digital after years of relying on manual processes and a productive labour force. Yet, adapting to changing conditions can be especially challenging without the right digital tools or processes. Conventional methods such as referring to historical data for forecasting and collaborating on spreadsheets, are overly manual processes which are contributing to reduced efficiency and overall productivity. 
 
Manufacturers need to adopt the mind-set of a technology company – moving their operations to the cloud, leveraging automation, creating digital experiences for their customers and their extended ecosystem and their workforce, and applying AI combined with data-led insights for decision making to help position their companies for success over the next decade.
 
The operation of IT and OT in silos is an acknowledged bottleneck. How serious is it? To what extent can digital tools help in such cases as companies are committed to digitalisation?

To give you a perspective on the challenges faced by manufacturers due to siloed IT and OT systems, the year 2020 saw a see-saw of demand and supply. During the early part of the year as the pandemic spread, manufacturers had to shut down their factories and operations leading to a supply shortfall that could not match with the excessive pent up demand coming back as the lock downs were eased resulting in unfulfilled demand and lost business. This unprecedented level of volatility has made one thing clear – conventional demand forecasting approaches aren’t keeping pace with rapidly evolving customer needs. Manufacturers need to drive more efficient integration between their IT and OT systems to better respond to changing demand patterns and gain improved visibility across their supply chain but also deliver customer centric personalised products and solutions.
 
According to the recent Trends in Manufacturing Report by Salesforce, Eight in 10 manufacturers (81%) say they need both new approaches and new tools for accurate forecasting. With increasing process efficiencies and demand planning being a top priority throughout the supply-chain, it’s no surprise that business leaders are now heavily investing in digitalisation to bring the customer facing front office processes and the middle and back office operational processes together to drive a holistic, integrated approach to achieve resilient, agile business operations.
 
Manufacturers typically run into a few challenges such as, grappling with a maze of legacy systems, disparate point solutions, and data locked within the ERP. In addition, Sales operations, finance, analytics teams, and business leaders don’t have a single source of data, which hinders collaboration between teams and drastically increases the time for decisions to be made. To solve these problems, manufacturers must leverage cloud technologies that unlock data from legacy systems and allow every customer function to communicate and collaborate using a single source of truth.
 
Working collaboratively with colleagues, partners, and customers from anywhere is the next normal. Manufacturers that continue to depend on face-to-face interactions and employees anchored to legacy systems in the office risk their relevance with partners and customers.
 
How can Salesforce help the manufacturing sector overcome the pain points?

Forward-thinking manufacturers are defining, developing, and rapidly accelerating digitisation to compete on the most important market differentiator: their ability to understand, engage, and earn the trust of their ecosystem. These companies put their partners and customers first. Salesforce’s business has been built on the gradual evolution from a product-centric world to one in which partners and customers demand to be at the centre of your business.
 
Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud for instance is designed from the ground up with endless optionality and expandability. It delivers simple, click-based configuration out of the box, and evolves as your organisation adapts and your needs change. From manual data uploads to full system integration, and from basic reporting to AI-enabled analytics, Salesforce can meet your needs wherever they begin and keep up with wherever they’re going
 
With solutions such as Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud, companies can give buyers the B2C experiences they demand, while also generating more revenue at a lower cost of sales. The solution simplifies online buying with capabilities for fast reorders, contract pricing, custom catalogues, and more. It also empowers sales teams with automated processes and 360-degree views of the customer for informed decision-making.
 
Manufacturers who embrace digitisation are leading the industry into the future, increasing innovation and efficiency across the board. These companies are creating tremendous new opportunities with tools that ensure that sales, marketing, operations, service, and partner networks are all accessing powerful, shared data and insights, to collaborate on a new level.
 
However, empowering employees with new ways of working starts with inspiring them to embrace those new ways of working. So it’s important to understand the three key focal points for successful change management: people, process, and technology. The goal of digitisation is to create a better customer experience. But that starts with your employee experience; empowering your people with easy-to-use tools to help them work smarter ensures they’ll deliver more reliably and more efficiently for your customers. Salesforce provides workshops, help centres, and engaging, easy-to-use online resources like Trailhead, a training platform that rewards employees as they progress along their learning tracks.
 
Most companies are already in the process of digital transformation albeit at different stages. Can an external CRM suite fit in this scenario?
For years, business leaders have discussed the need to digitally transform and achieve a holistic view of the customer. In just a few months’ time, the Covid-19 crisis brought about years of change in the way companies across all sectors and regions do business, and in the way customers and employees live their lives. In this all digital, work from anywhere world, companies are using digital technologies and data to transform themselves by reimagining their customer, employee, partner, and product experiences. All of these stakeholders expect truly connected experiences that meet them where they are, no matter the interaction. The average experience requires data across 35 different systems — and the average enterprise has data in 900 different systems and apps. Be it 9 or 900, access to this data is critical, and integration is all too often the #1 reason new initiatives fail — slowing you down at a time when there’s not a moment to waste.
 
85% of organisations say integration challenges slow down the pace of digital transformation; more than half are still providing disconnected customer experiences across channels (Connectivity Benchmark Report).
 
That’s where Salesforce's MuleSoft platform comes in – making it possible to empower everyone in the company, from IT to LoB, from small business to enterprise, from integration to API management, to unlock data and create connected experiences, faster.
 
Users from IT to business can quickly integrate systems, unlock data, and enable success from anywhere through connected experiences — with no coding required and automation built in for any business user, all while IT maintains security and control.
 
What is the potential market in India and how deep is the Salesforce engagement here?
The potential is huge; the manufacturing sector contributed 17.4 per cent of India's GDP in fiscal year 2020. According to the International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook Update, India is the only major economy in the world to rise by double digits in the face of a global pandemic. Even India's growth rate is expected to be 11.5 per cent in 2021, according to the IMF. This shows the potential in the Indian market.
 
The adoption of new business models, coupled with their progress migrating service systems to the cloud, have positioned future-ready manufacturers ahead of their peers. For instance, Salesforce Customer 360 is utilised extensively in Penna Cement’s sales, marketing, service, and business intelligence operations. Penna Cement uses campaigns on sales cloud to optimise marketing budgets, nurture leads, and automate campaigns through SMSs and emails; while Service Cloud consolidates all service-related requests, queries, and quality complaints on a single platform, providing complete visibility to the teams. Pidilite Industries Limited is yet another example of how a leading manufacturer in India, leveraged Salesforce to Service Cloud to drive new product customer trials and also streamlining influencer marketing by leveraging the Heroku platform.
 
While more future-ready manufacturers report adjusting their business in response to the pandemic, these changes appear to have made them more resilient. Future-ready manufacturers are nearly three times as likely to react rapidly to market disruption. At the same time, future-ready manufacturers are 2.2 times more likely to have moved most of their sales and operations systems to the cloud. Not a single unprepared manufacturer has fully moved its sales and operations to the cloud.
 
Rajkumar Ravuri is a Director and Manufacturing Industry Advisor at Salesforce based in India. He is responsible for Customer CXO advisory for transformational initiatives, and the Go-To-Market strategy for Manufacturing sector across India, and Asia Pacific region. Raj has 25+ years of experience in the IT industry across Salesforce, Wipro, KPMG Consulting, etc., advising Fortune 500 organisations across the Manufacturing sector in USA, Europe, and Asia Pacific. He has had executive leadership training with Stanford University, is a Mechanical engineering graduate from Osmania University. He has delivered key note sessions and/or been invited as an expert panel member at major industry events in Berlin, Detroit, World Economic Forum New York, Hannover Messe, Oracle Open World, India Auto Aftermarket Forum, etc.