An Expert’s 101 Guide to Tackling Digital Transformation as a Business Leader [New Podcast]

Automation and digital transformation are no longer a new concept in the industrial space, but adoption is still an uphill battle for some key players.

In this week’s episode of the Thomas Industry Update Podcast, Thomas CEO and President Tony Uphoff sits down with Keith Higgins, the vice president of digital transformation at Rockwell Automation, to address industry leaders’ questions surrounding tech adoption, data-driven decision making, and staying ahead of the digital transformation curve.

"What we’re seeing right now is that so many of our customers in different stages of their digital journey, they’re all asking the same questions,” Higgins explains. "[They ask] ‘I realize that digital transformation is an important competitive imperative. How would you break that down for me in my industry in my state of data, my state of readiness for this type of activity, and where do I get started?'”

Digital Transformation Is No Longer Optional

In the past, the dialogue surrounding digital transformation has been one that can be described as "innovative.” Adopters are given the opportunity to collect data on everyday processes and, in turn, make operations more efficient. However, as more companies turn to adoption, the conversation has changed: According to Higgins, instead of a competitive advantage, digital transformation is a competitive imperative.

"People are now realizing, ‘Hey, I better get going because my competitors are,'” he says. "So it’s more of a competitive imperative now than maybe a fear [or] opportunity. It’s becoming much more mainstream today.”

Although transitions are usually a slow and gradual process, Rockwell Automation has noticed a major factor that’s driving the digital transformation over the last year: COVID-19’s demand for distanced operations.

"The market is at [the point of] "How do I get the right data combined and then provide the right insights to the right people at the right time, even with the right tools?” Higgins says. "One thing we’ve seen from this pandemic is the advantages of things like augmented reality and the ability to do distanced learning of some of these industrial techniques.”

Connecting Machinery to the "As-a-service” Model

With new technology often comes new business opportunities, and industry’s digital transformation is no exception. Purchasing a finite, tangible product could soon be a thing of the past as industry transitions to the "as-a-service” subscription model. Especially for equipment manufacturers, Higgins says one of the most commonly asked questions about adoption is "How do I sell a piece of equipment as a service?”

"For our customers that make everything from HVAC systems to you-name-it, the ability to start to sell that either as a service or with a value-added service like predictive maintenance is a big, new revenue stream,” Higgins says. "Analytics, performance, and the ability to create smart, connected machines that could be sold as a service.”

He further explains that real-time visibility, supply chain, workforce augmentation, and asset maximization are the most common areas he’s seeing that are hungry for digital transformation.

"What we’re seeing right now is the understanding of the importance of competency around IT/OT integration and how these systems work together, because a lot of the things that you’re using now to generate analytics, to generate business intelligence, to generate augmented reality… these systems need to have a very good contextual understanding of what’s happening in the OT environment,” Higgins explains. "And that’s where there is a lot of innovation happening right now, on the vendor side at least, in terms of how to bring those worlds together, because that really is the epicenter of the success of a lot of these use cases.”

How to Make the Most of Automation at Your Industrial Facility

For more advice from Rockwell Automation’s VP of Digital Transformation on how you can capitalize on an investment in automation, listen to this week’s episode of the Thomas Industry Update Podcast, available to stream on the following platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Play
• Stitcher