In our last post we introduced the eight common barriers to digital adoption and acceleration in industry. In this post we’ll dive into more detail on the first three of those barriers, cybersecurity concerns, difficulty replacing legacy systems, and linking investment with business goals:
1. Cybersecurity concerns
As technology and knowledge of the tech space evolves and grows, so do incidents related to cybersecurity breaches.
Decisions around which operational technologies to invest in and deploy are frequently made by leaders within operations that do not necessarily involve corporate IT decision makers. The result can be a mixed tech stack with different security control capabilities. The advantages of connectivity associated with improved collaboration, increased productivity, and faster identification and remediation of defects is tempered by the increase in potential vulnerabilities at the connected site. For any business with control systems that manage industrial operations, this is a very real risk.
How VEERUM address this concern:
VEERUM is ISO 27001 compliant. This is a universal standard around the globe and is recognized by all industries, and in all regions. ISO 27001 helios organizations design and implement information security management systems (ISMS( that ensure stronger cybersecurity compliance.
VEERUM is SOC 2 compliant, proving VEERUM's commitment to ensuring security controls that protect client data.
VEERUM has passed AWS FTR, validating that VEERUM’s digital twin technology meets the best practice standards for security, reliability, and operational excellence.
2. Replacing legacy systems is not easy
Many organizations in capital intensive industries are using systems that are decades old, and which pose a challenge to new shiny, smart IoT technologies.
These legacy systems are costly and difficult to maintain, especially as time marches forward. Vendors cease support for old systems and software, sometimes they are acquired, sometimes they simply cease to exist, but the pain to transition even though the support is no longer available, is sometimes perceived as a depreciation to be absorbed until it is simply no longer feasible to do so.
There is also the state of confusion that is frequently prevalent in enterprise architecture at these organizations due to siloed systems, including bespoke systems developed in house to meet certain departmental goals.
Consider the indisputable fact that productivity and efficiency at site today depends on interconnectivity, collaboration, integration and communication. Then consider just how much effort and cost it will be to continue to maintain that which is essentially defunct or soon to be, versus taking time and budget now to stay with the curve if not ahead of it. Change is coming. You’re ahead of it, with it, or behind it. Being a laggard now will erode any competitive advantage you have and push you down the curve of your rapidly changing stakeholder expectations.
How VEERUM helps to alleviate some of this concern:
VEERUM ingests, aggregates, organizes, analyzes and visualizes all of your engineering, geospatial, planning, scheduling and operational data in a single web-based interface.
VEERUM is vendor agnostic and can integrate with nearly all systems to ingest your data. The state of organization of your data is irrelevant. VEERUM will organize it. Visualizing your data in 3D is exactly what the platform excels at, and VEERUM can also get your business production ready on its digital twin platform in 48 hours with your current data.
3. Linking digital investments with business goals
It is not impossible to link technology investments with business goals. In fact, it should be a requirement.
Companies are predicting sizeable leaps in business performance from their use of digital technologies. Each year, due to the incorporation of emerging digital technologies, more businesses expect major output improvements. More and more business leaders now expect to see significant effects from their digital technologies. This rate of digital transition has been characterized as a “steepening trajectory,1“ and states a “tightening digital race across all industries” as companies increasingly perceive the digital ecosystem as the dominant competitive field.
If a technology is truly going to transform your productivity and efficiency it should be tied to an ROI objective, be it customer engagement, improved productivity, increased revenue or reduced costs.
Transformation is about quality, not quantity when it comes to the number of technologies you invest in. In fact, maintaining a tight tech stack is highly advantageous for many reasons. It is interesting to note that many government organizations have still not migrated to the cloud, which results in over-blown tech stacks simply because many on premise software technologies simply do not play well together, are no longer being supported, or if they are, come with large maintenance and support costs.
Digital transformation requires planning, but it also not a crippling endeavours particularly when you can gain in-quarter returns.
How VEERUM addresses this barrier:
For many capital intensive industries, among other key performance indicators, a few that resonate with most of our clients include minimizing time on site, increasing productivity, reducing site exposure, reducing costs, C02 emission reduction, and a rapid return on investment. Here are a few results VEERUM has already, and continues to, deliver:
30% improvement in productivity
50% reduction in field exposure
25% reduction in inspection costs
20% reduction in CO2 emissions
20+% improvement to most core business KPIs
In-quarter ROI
In our next post, the third of our four part series, we’ll dive into the nitty-gritty on the next two common barriers to digital adoption faced by capital intensive industries: knowledge gaps across the business and silos, employee resistance to change, and a risk averse culture.
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