Here Is Why Your Manufacturing Company Needs To Take Advantage of The Cloud
Manufacturing is an ever-changing industry with a host of new challenges each year. It’s changing more rapidly than it did during the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing businesses are continuously under pressure to develop new products and get them to market quickly. With both local and offshore competition, the pressure on your company will continue to increase.
To remain competitive, you must innovate through the use of technology. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you’ll need the best technology support available and this can be challenging. Many manufacturers today are overcoming these challenges by working in the Cloud.
The Cloud is changing how we all do business. By taking advantage of the awesome power of the cloud, your manufacturing plant can lower its costs, keep up with customer expectations, and help your employees get more done in less time. Sound pretty good?
Why Should You Work In The Cloud?
1. Lower Your Costs
With the Cloud, you can reduce costs and get the most value from your IT assets. When you outsource the management of your IT infrastructure to an IT Service Provider via the Cloud, your operational, maintenance and administration costs are reduced. The need for you to employ staff to maintain, administer and update hardware and software are eliminated. Plus, you’ll be free from the worry of IT headaches.
And, with cloud services, you can save from investments in software, hardware and IT infrastructure solutions. All of this can be “rented” via the Cloud. You’ll lower your capital outlay and free up cash for other initiatives. Plus, when you use cloud services, you can benefit from user-based billing where you only pay for what you need and nothing more.
2. The Cloud provides flexibility
Change is a constant, and all companies, including manufacturing companies, must be able to adapt to change. Static, on-premise IT solutions and infrastructures can hold you back. The Cloud supports flexibility in a number of ways.
Scalability: The cloud makes it easy to scale up or down if you have slow or busy seasons and most manufacturers do. You can scale cloud services up if you take on a new customer.
This is especially useful for manufacturers that operate on a seasonal cycle.
Mobility: Before the Cloud, if you wanted to get work done, you had to go to your office and use your desktop computer. This made it impossible to retrieve your digital files if you were stuck at home or traveling. Today, if you need to view a file or work on a project, you simply go online using the device of your choice and work in the Cloud.
Agility: Working in the Cloud provides agility for your staff. They can easily adjust to new conditions. With traditional on-premise IT solutions, this process is slower and more complex. The Cloud allows for faster application deployments, data backups and computing power.
3. Enhance Collaboration, Efficiency & Productivity
Leading manufacturers use cloud technologies to enable easy collaboration that keeps everyone informed and working. Your teams can work on the same project from different locations. Documents and files are updated in real time.
Do More With Less: With the Cloud, your employees can work more efficiently. You’ll benefit from a shorter time-to-market because your people and processes are simply more efficient. You’ll save time and money.
No More Duplication Of Efforts: Eliminate duplication of efforts to increase overall efficiency. Changes to documents can be made in real time, so your employees won’t need to upload, download or email versions to one another. That includes all projects and it’s a great way to avoid having different people do the same job over and over.
Enterprise Resource Planning In The Cloud: With cloud-based ERP systems and other applications, your staff will experience higher rates of productivity. They can optimize their time when accessing, retrieving and processing information to carry out operations more efficiently. Productive happy employees just make for a better workplace.
Manage Projects from One Dashboard: Working in the Cloud lets you assign and monitor tasks, get metrics from your applications, and manage your configurations in single, easy-to-understand screens. Using a centralized cloud-based location means less time going back and forth with your managers to get and verify information.
Eliminate Downtime With The Cloud: Your managed IT provider can manage, monitor and maintain a cloud-based Infrastructure much easier. They will often see an issue and resolve it before it causes any trouble. This means fewer interruptions to your business operations and less downtime. With uninterrupted continuity of your manufacturing operations, you’ll add long-term value to your business.
Manufacturers across Southeast Texas can benefit from the cloud in many other ways, including things like product planning, marketing, inventory management, shipping, invoicing, accounts receivables and payables, and much more.
