1. Digital transformation discussion guide for customers in MANUFACTURING
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HOW TO USE: This guide was created to provide a foundation for your digital transformation sales calls. The first two columns can help frame your customer conversations and should be tailored to your company’s offerings. The third column explains how Microsoft IoT solutions help meet the needs of the industry. The fourth column should be completed by you with examples of your unique solutions and services and how they deliver on the IoT promise. Examples are provided to get you started.
VALUE PROP: The Internet of Things (IoT) builds on the technology investments you have already made and brings your data together in new ways that engage your customers, empower your employees, optimize your operations, and transform your products to drive tangible, real-time business results. (Your name) delivers this value by integrating devices, systems, and people to enable the digital transformation.
(This is the value you provide to your customers. Modify to fit your unique value-add.)
SELLING OPPORTUNITY: About 5.5 million new devices are connected to the Internet every day1, representing a $1.7 trillion market opportunity by Taking advantage of this opportunity will require system integrators that can securely integrate these devices to new systems and software as well as legacy infrastructure to help businesses reduce costs and inefficiencies, increase revenues, and create new business models and opportunities.
1 Gartner press release, Nov. 10, IDC press release, Jun 2, 2015
WHO ARE WE SELLING TO? Managers: Operations, plant, inventory, warehouse, production, supply chain | CEO, CFO
PAIN POINTS | CONCERNS
High-level challenges and objectives of businesses in the industry
PROBING QUESTIONS
Probing questions uncover the prospect’s unique challenges and objectives. (Add questions related to your offering.)
HOW CAN MICROSOFT HELP?
Microsoft digital transformation messaging
HOW CAN YOUR SOLUTION HELP?
(Tie the benefits of your solution back to pain points and Microsoft key messages.)
ENGAGE CUSTOMERS
Increase direct customer engagement.
Add value; create preferred supplier status.
Stay ahead of increasing competition.
Protect margins through product innovation and increase value to the customer.
Secure customer trust in new technologies and data confidentiality.
How do you use technology to engage customers today? Are these systems integrated?
If you could engage customers directly, what kinds of input would be beneficial?
If you could define an ideal relationship with customers, what would it look like?
How are you creating a customer-centric experience?
How would you describe your competitive position in the marketplace?
Do employees throughout your organization have direct customer contact or only specific roles?
Build stronger, more direct customer engagement by harnessing big data and other opportunities like social media.
Improve collaboration with supply chain partners and increase value by improving visibility into operations through portals.
Use social, mobile, and cloud technologies to be more responsive and customer-centric.
(Highlight ways your solution can help manufacturers engage customers directly to drive innovation and increase value.
Examples:
Create portals that aggregate social media interactions to make it easier for employees to engage customers effectively online.
Improve customer satisfaction and supply chain coordination by providing secure supply chain order visibility to end customers.
Encourage direct customer engagement and increased brand loyalty with an integrated platform that securely combines popular social media platforms with customer-facing portals and websites.
EMPOWER EMPLOYEES
Empower shop floor employees to make decisions faster.
Increase employee efficiency.
Tap into employee ideas for process improvement.
Decrease errors or delays by increasing access to information.
Create a tech-savvy workforce that embraces innovation.
Ensure data security, even with a BYOD policy.
How are your employees across the enterprise using technologies such as mobile in their day-to-day activities?
Are your employees using their own phones, tablets, other devices?
How are you connected to your vendors, partners, supply chain?
How do you motivate employees to be productive and innovative?
Use security-enhanced, on-premises, and cloud-based productivity and BYOD assets to enable employees throughout the enterprise, including the shop floor.
Engage employees with familiar devices and apps that make work inviting and help ensure data is kept secure, edge-to-enterprise.
Enable employees to work from anywhere and make it easy for them to collaborate with colleagues, partners, suppliers, and customers around the world to promote innovation.
(Highlight ways your solution can help manufacturing employees to make better business decisions.
Improve sales and operations planning with dashboards that provide visibility up and down the supply chain and into the shop floor.
Provide employees across the supply chain with a portal that allows them to view role-related data, such as shipment status, and alert others to potential problems.
OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS
Support continuous improvement initiatives.
Increase efficiency, removing unnecessary steps.
Increase visibility into operations.
Improve coordination across the value chain.
Provide insights for faster decision making.
Maximize existing investments in technology.
Lower OpEx.
What are your most important KPIs? How are you doing against targets?
Do you subscribe to any specific continuous improvement philosophies?
What insights/data would you like to have that you don’t have today?
Are there areas in the value chain that could benefit from improved communication and coordination?
How are you securing data and protecting your IP?
Does your shop floor equipment already have embedded intelligence? How are you using those capabilities?
How concerned are you about unplanned downtime?
Connect existing assets, suppliers, distributors, and customers to gain complete value-chain visibility.
Use mobile devices and dashboards to make decision-making data readily accessible.
Help secure, manage, and exploit the “device mesh,” a shifting array of devices connected to each other and to cloud services, to drive digital business strategies.
Develop alliances to compete across markets.
(Highlight ways your solution can help support continuous improvement initiatives, reduce waste, or lower costs.
Implement wearables and intelligent devices that collect process data—including time and motion, scrap levels, retooling time, cycle time—to provide data for Lean and Six Sigma initiatives.
Reduce waste by monitoring conditions (such as temperature, humidity, flow rate) that could impact product quality throughout the supply chain.
TRANSFORM PRODUCTS
Leverage employee insights and customer input for product innovation.
Use market insights to drive product innovation.
Enhance supply chain value.
Drive a sustainable competitive advantage.
Create innovative, on-time, and differentiated competitive products for a global marketplace.
What drives your product innovation?
Are you engaging customers in the process?
Do you gather intelligence on how customers are using your products?
How are your competitors engaging your customers?
Are you mining data to identify market trends?
Would you say your product development is customer-centric?
Harness customer connections, big data, and social media to spot trends and opportunities.
Know what products customers want even before starting product development.
Use technology to foster a culture of innovation to create a competitive edge.
(Highlight ways your solution uses IoT to help manufacturers use IoT to drive innovation and create a sustainable competitive advantage.
Integrate and synthesize customer and market intelligence from multiple sources to surface ideas for product innovation.
Provide R&D team with an integrated dashboard that combines external data on market trends and consumer preferences with internal customer data including usage data collected from embedded intelligence.