While cloud adoption in the enterprise has steadily increased in the last decade, some industries have been slow to transition. Regardless of where an organization is in its digital transformation journey, moving to the cloud offers major benefits ranging from cost savings to mobile workforce management improvements. These benefits especially apply to asset-intensive industries that rely on a distributed or mobile workforce with engineers on site.
What is Cloud Technology for Enterprise Organizations?
Cloud computing is a flexible way to manage IT resources. Organizations benefit from on-demand delivery of IT resources including data storage, development tools, apps, networking capabilities, and more. Enterprise users access these services over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing, typically in monthly or annual subscriptions. One of the biggest IT benefits is that cloud service providers (CSP) such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) manage the physical data center, freeing up IT resources and reducing capital expenditures.
The state of Cloud Adoption in the Enterprise
“More than half of enterprise IT Spending in key market segments will shift to the cloud by 2025,” according to Gartner.
Asset-intensive organizations such as utilities, oil and gas companies, and some manufacturers have lagged their peers when it comes to digital initiatives including cloud migration. But analysts warn that as the pace of transformation increases, organizations waiting too long will be left behind. The question to ask, “Do you want to be a market leader?”
“The shift to the cloud has only accelerated over the past two years due to COVID-19, as organizations responded to a new business and social dynamic,” said Michael Warrilow, research vice president at Gartner. “Technology and service providers that fail to adapt to the pace of cloud shift face increasing risk of becoming obsolete or, at best, being relegated to low-growth markets.”
The good news is that it’s never too late to reap the benefits of a cloud transformation, and that’s true for individual departments within an organization such as industrial maintenance operations.
Benefits of Cloud Adoption
Large enterprise organizations, including those who have a dispersed or mobile workforce, can expect big benefits from cloud adoption. Moving from legacy, on-premise technology to cloud solutions offers companies an affordable and scalable infrastructure that can help them meet the challenges of fluctuating operation demands while also reducing costs. When maintenance organizations move to cloud-based maintenance systems, they will see:
Cost Savings
One of the most significant benefits of cloud adoption is cost savings across every part of the enterprise. Moving even small parts of maintenance and operations technology to the cloud comes with big benefits. Industries ranging from manufacturing and utilities to oil and gas companies can reduce their capital expenditures and eliminate hardware and maintenance costs.
Additionally, CSPs typically offer pay-as-you-go pricing models. This enables organizations to better balance their budget by more accurately predicting pricing and lower operating costs versus on-premise hosting. McKinsey noted that moving to the cloud can reduce IT overhead costs by 30 to 40 percent.
Better Collaboration and Communication
Cloud adoption will greatly improve collaboration and communication among teams, especially among a distributed workforce such as within industrial maintenance. Cloud-based tools ranging from video chat to mobile maintenance apps enable teams to work together more efficiently with real-time communication or data sharing.
This is especially critical in asset-intensive industries where the workforce is distributed across different locations or even in remote geographies. For example, a utility or oil and gas company may have teams working in different locations at different times, such as planners and schedulers at a home base, while maintenance engineers are in the field. Cloud-based tools that enable communication and offer online and offline functionality are mission-critical to safely and accurately completing a job.
Scalability and Flexibility
Another significant benefit of cloud adoption is the ability to scale your business or operations as needed. Asset-intensive organizations manage rapidly changing market conditions and demands. Cloud adoption enables these organizations to respond more quickly and scale their resources up or down as needed with minimal IT or operations lift. This agility and flexibility help organizations to remain competitive and quickly adapt to changing market conditions.
The ability to quickly meet fluctuating demand or pivot when customer or economic demand requires is essential to remain competitive, especially in a post-COVID economy.
Improved Service Outcomes
When teams have the information they need on demand, jobs get completed faster and more accurately. Moving to the cloud and adopting cloud-based apps for mobile workforce management in industrial maintenance improve operational equipment efficiency (OEE) while reducing operating costs. Asset-intensive organizations that have adopted cloud-based apps such as mobile maintenance solutions are able to:
- Increase technician wrench time
- Capture data in real-time
- Improve data accuracy
- Minimize accidents and improve safety
Contact us to learn how Sigga’s cloud-based technology for your industrial maintenance teams will help you boost business results.