35% of companies adopting Industry 4.0 predict revenue gains over 20% in the next five years.
Data analytics and digital trust are the foundations of Industry 4.0.
Cost-sensitive industries including semiconductors, electronics, and oil and gas are the most focused on adopting Industry 4.0, with 80% of companies in these industries saying it is one of their top priorities.
The recent article by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Sprinting To Value In Industry 4.0, provides insights into how real-time integration between enterprise systems is an essential catalyst for Industry 4.0 growth. Industry 4.0 focuses on the end-to-end digitisation of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems with value chain partners encompassing a broad spectrum of technologies. BCG surveyed 380 US-based manufacturing executives and managers at companies representing a wide range of sizes in various industries to complete the study.
Industry 4.0 is at an inflection point today
Having attained initial results from Industry 4.0 initiatives, many manufacturers are moving forward with the advanced analytics and Big Data-related projects that are based on real-time integration between CRM, ERP, 3rd party and legacy systems. A recent Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) study of Industry 4.0 adoption, Industry 4.0: Building The Digital Enterprise (PDF, no opt-in, 36 pp.) found that 72% of manufacturing enterprises predict their use of data analytics will substantially improve customer relationships and customer intelligence along the product life cycle. Real-time integration enables manufacturers to more effectively serve their customers, communicate with suppliers, and manage distribution channels. Of the many innovative start-ups taking on the complex challenges of integrating cloud and on-premise systems to streamline revenue-generating business processes, enosiX shows potential to bridge legacy ERP and cloud-based CRM systems quickly and deliver results.
There are many more potential benefits to adopting Industry 4.0 for those enterprises who choose to create and continually strengthen real-time integration links across the global operations. Recent research completed by Boston Consulting Group and PwC highlight several of them below:
Manufacturers expect to gain the greatest value from Industry 4.0 by reducing manufacturing costs (47%), improving product quality (43%) and attaining operations agility (42%). 89% of all manufacturers see an opportunity to use Industry 4.0 to improve manufacturing productivity. Reducing supply chain costs (37%), enabling product innovation (33%) and attaining faster time-to-market (31%) are the next level of benefits manufacturers expect to attain. The following graphic provides an analysis of where manufacturers see Industry 4.0 having the greatest impact on their organizations.
Manufacturers are gaining the greatest value from Industry 4.0 by creating pilot projects that create flexible, agile real-time platforms supporting new business models with real-time integration. Industry 4.0’s focus on enabling end-to-end digitization of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems relies on real-time integration to succeed. For manufacturers in cost-sensitive industries, the urgency of translating the vision of digital transformation into results is key to their future growth. The more competitively intense an industry, the more essential real-time integration
Investing in greater digitisation and support for enterprise-wide integration is predicted to increase 118% by 2020 in support of Industry 4.0. 33% of manufacturers surveyed report they have a high level of digitisation today, projected to increase to 72% by 2020. The leading areas of these investments include vertical value chain integration (72%), product development and engineering (71%), and customer access including sales channels and marketing (68%).
New product development and optimising existing products and services are the greatest areas of growth potential for analytics and big data using Industry 4.0 technologies and integration strategies through 2020. Industry 4.0 is revolutionising the use of analytics and manufacturing intelligence, setting the foundation for greater optimisation of overall business and control, better manufacturing, and operations planning, greater optimization of logistics and more efficient maintenance of production assets and machinery. By better orchestrating these strategic areas, manufacturers are going to be able to attain levels of accuracy and responsiveness to customers not achievable before.
Globally, manufacturing enterprises expect to gain an additional 2.9% in digital revenues per year through 2020, with digitising their existing product portfolios (47%) leading all other strategies, further underscoring the need for real-time integration. Introducing an entirely new digital product portfolio is the second most common strategy (44%) followed by creating and offering new digital services to external customers (42%). Just over a third (38%) plan to create and sell big data analytics services to external customers.
35% of companies adopting Industry 4.0 predict revenue gains over 20% in the next five years.
Data analytics and digital trust are the foundations of Industry 4.0.
Cost-sensitive industries including semiconductors, electronics, and oil and gas are the most focused on adopting Industry 4.0, with 80% of companies in these industries saying it is one of their top priorities.
The recent article by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Sprinting To Value In Industry 4.0, provides insights into how real-time integration between enterprise systems is an essential catalyst for Industry 4.0 growth. Industry 4.0 focuses on the end-to-end digitisation of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems with value chain partners encompassing a broad spectrum of technologies. BCG surveyed 380 US-based manufacturing executives and managers at companies representing a wide range of sizes in various industries to complete the study.
Industry 4.0 is at an inflection point today
Having attained initial results from Industry 4.0 initiatives, many manufacturers are moving forward with the advanced analytics and Big Data-related projects that are based on real-time integration between CRM, ERP, 3rd party and legacy systems. A recent Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) study of Industry 4.0 adoption, Industry 4.0: Building The Digital Enterprise (PDF, no opt-in, 36 pp.) found that 72% of manufacturing enterprises predict their use of data analytics will substantially improve customer relationships and customer intelligence along the product life cycle. Real-time integration enables manufacturers to more effectively serve their customers, communicate with suppliers, and manage distribution channels. Of the many innovative start-ups taking on the complex challenges of integrating cloud and on-premise systems to streamline revenue-generating business processes, enosiX shows potential to bridge legacy ERP and cloud-based CRM systems quickly and deliver results.
There are many more potential benefits to adopting Industry 4.0 for those enterprises who choose to create and continually strengthen real-time integration links across the global operations. Recent research completed by Boston Consulting Group and PwC highlight several of them below:
Manufacturers expect to gain the greatest value from Industry 4.0 by reducing manufacturing costs (47%), improving product quality (43%) and attaining operations agility (42%). 89% of all manufacturers see an opportunity to use Industry 4.0 to improve manufacturing productivity. Reducing supply chain costs (37%), enabling product innovation (33%) and attaining faster time-to-market (31%) are the next level of benefits manufacturers expect to attain. The following graphic provides an analysis of where manufacturers see Industry 4.0 having the greatest impact on their organizations.
Manufacturers are gaining the greatest value from Industry 4.0 by creating pilot projects that create flexible, agile real-time platforms supporting new business models with real-time integration. Industry 4.0’s focus on enabling end-to-end digitization of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems relies on real-time integration to succeed. For manufacturers in cost-sensitive industries, the urgency of translating the vision of digital transformation into results is key to their future growth. The more competitively intense an industry, the more essential real-time integration
Investing in greater digitisation and support for enterprise-wide integration is predicted to increase 118% by 2020 in support of Industry 4.0. 33% of manufacturers surveyed report they have a high level of digitisation today, projected to increase to 72% by 2020. The leading areas of these investments include vertical value chain integration (72%), product development and engineering (71%), and customer access including sales channels and marketing (68%).
New product development and optimising existing products and services are the greatest areas of growth potential for analytics and big data using Industry 4.0 technologies and integration strategies through 2020. Industry 4.0 is revolutionising the use of analytics and manufacturing intelligence, setting the foundation for greater optimisation of overall business and control, better manufacturing, and operations planning, greater optimization of logistics and more efficient maintenance of production assets and machinery. By better orchestrating these strategic areas, manufacturers are going to be able to attain levels of accuracy and responsiveness to customers not achievable before.
Globally, manufacturing enterprises expect to gain an additional 2.9% in digital revenues per year through 2020, with digitising their existing product portfolios (47%) leading all other strategies, further underscoring the need for real-time integration. Introducing an entirely new digital product portfolio is the second most common strategy (44%) followed by creating and offering new digital services to external customers (42%). Just over a third (38%) plan to create and sell big data analytics services to external customers.
The more integrated the systems are supporting any selling strategy, the greater the chances sales will increase. That’s because accuracy, speed, and quality of every quote matter more than ever. Being able to strengthen every customer interaction with insight and intelligence often means the difference between successful upsells, cross-sells and the chance to bid and win new projects. Defining a roadmap to enrich selling strategies using SAP integration is delivering results across a variety of manufacturing and service industries today.
Getting more value out of the customer data locked in legacy SAP systems can improve selling results starting with existing sales cycles. Knowing what each customer purchased, when, at what price, and for which project or location is invaluable in accelerating sales cycles today. There are many ways to improve selling results using SAP integration, and the following are the top three based on conversations with SAP Architects, CIOs and IT Directors working with Sales Operations to improve selling results. These five approaches are generating more leads, closing more deals, leading to better selling decisions and improving sales productivity.
Three ways SAP integration is improving selling results
Reducing and eliminating significant gaps in the Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) process by integrating Salesforce and SAP systems improves selling and revenue results quickly. The following two illustrations compare how much time and revenue escape from the selling process. It’s common to see companies lose at least 20% of their orders when they rely on manual approaches to handling quotes, pricing, and configurations. The greater the complexity of the deal is the more potential for lost revenue. The second graphic shows how greater system integration leads to lower costs to complete an order, cycle time reductions, order rework reductions, and lead times for entire orders dropping from 69 to 22 days.
Having customer order history, pricing, discounts and previously purchased bundles stored in SAP ERP systems integrated into Salesforce will drive better decisions on which customers are most likely to buy upsells, cross-sells and new products when. Instead of having just to rely on current activity with a given customer, sales teams can analyze sales history to find potential purchasing trends and indications of who can sign off on deals in progress. Having real-time access to SAP data within Salesforce gives sales teams the most valuable competitive advantage there is, which is more time to focus on customers and closing deals. enosiX is taking a leadership role in the area of real-time SAP to Salesforce integration, enabling enterprises to sell and operate more effectively.
Improving sales operations and customer service productivity by providing customer data in real-time via Salesforce to support teams on a 24/7 basis worldwide. The two departments who rely on customer data more than sales need to have real-time access to customer data on a 24/7 basis from any device at any time, on a global scale. By integrating customer data held today in SAP ERP and related systems to Salesforce, Sales Operations, and Customer Service will have the visibility they’ve never had before. And that will translate into faster response times, higher customer satisfaction and potentially more sales too.
The more integrated the systems are supporting any selling strategy, the greater the chances sales will increase. That’s because accuracy, speed, and quality of every quote matter more than ever. Being able to strengthen every customer interaction with insight and intelligence often means the difference between successful upsells, cross-sells and the chance to bid and win new projects. Defining a roadmap to enrich selling strategies using SAP integration is delivering results across a variety of manufacturing and service industries today.
Getting more value out of the customer data locked in legacy SAP systems can improve selling results starting with existing sales cycles. Knowing what each customer purchased, when, at what price, and for which project or location is invaluable in accelerating sales cycles today. There are many ways to improve selling results using SAP integration, and the following are the top three based on conversations with SAP Architects, CIOs and IT Directors working with Sales Operations to improve selling results. These five approaches are generating more leads, closing more deals, leading to better selling decisions and improving sales productivity.
Three ways SAP integration is improving selling results
Reducing and eliminating significant gaps in the Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) process by integrating Salesforce and SAP systems improves selling and revenue results quickly. The following two illustrations compare how much time and revenue escape from the selling process. It’s common to see companies lose at least 20% of their orders when they rely on manual approaches to handling quotes, pricing, and configurations. The greater the complexity of the deal is the more potential for lost revenue. The second graphic shows how greater system integration leads to lower costs to complete an order, cycle time reductions, order rework reductions, and lead times for entire orders dropping from 69 to 22 days.
Having customer order history, pricing, discounts and previously purchased bundles stored in SAP ERP systems integrated into Salesforce will drive better decisions on which customers are most likely to buy upsells, cross-sells and new products when. Instead of having just to rely on current activity with a given customer, sales teams can analyze sales history to find potential purchasing trends and indications of who can sign off on deals in progress. Having real-time access to SAP data within Salesforce gives sales teams the most valuable competitive advantage there is, which is more time to focus on customers and closing deals. enosiX is taking a leadership role in the area of real-time SAP to Salesforce integration, enabling enterprises to sell and operate more effectively.
Improving sales operations and customer service productivity by providing customer data in real-time via Salesforce to support teams on a 24/7 basis worldwide. The two departments who rely on customer data more than sales need to have real-time access to customer data on a 24/7 basis from any device at any time, on a global scale. By integrating customer data held today in SAP ERP and related systems to Salesforce, Sales Operations, and Customer Service will have the visibility they’ve never had before. And that will translate into faster response times, higher customer satisfaction and potentially more sales too.
Key takeaways from the study include the following:
Location-based services and U.S. retail are showing the greatest progress capturing value from data and analytics. Location-based services are capturing up to 60% of data and analytics value today predicted by McKinsey in their 2011 report. McKinsey predicts there are growing opportunities for businesses to use geospatial data to track assets, teams, and customers across dispersed locations to generate new insights and improve efficiency. U.S. Retail is capturing up to 40%, and Manufacturing, 30%. The following graphic compares the potential impact as predicted in McKinsey’s 2011 study with the value captured by segment today, including a definition of major barriers to adoption.
Machine learning’s greatest potential across industries includes improving forecasting and predictive analytics. McKinsey analyzed the 120 use cases their research found as most significant in machine learning and then weighted them based on respondents’ mention of each. The result is a heat map of machine learning’s greatest potential impact across industries and use case types. Please see the report for detailed scorecards of each industry’s use case ranked by impact and data richness.
Machine learning’s potential to deliver real-time optimization across industries is just starting to evolve and will quickly accelerate in the next three years. McKinsey analyzed the data richness associated with each of the 300 machine learning use cases, defining this attribute as a combination of data volume and variety. Please see page 105 of the study for a thorough explanation of McKinsey’s definition of data volume and variety used in the context of this study The result of evaluating machine learning’s data richness by industry is shown in the following heat map:
Enabling autonomous vehicles and personalizing advertising are two of the highest opportunity use cases for machine learning today. Additional use cases with high potential include optimizing pricing, routing, and scheduling based on real-time data in travel and logistics; predicting personalized health outcomes, and optimizing merchandising strategy in retail. McKinsey identified 120 potential use cases of machine learning in 12 industries and surveyed more than 600 industry experts on their potential impact. They found an extraordinary breadth of potential applications for machine learning. Each of the use cases was identified as being one of the top three in an industry by at least one expert in that industry. McKinsey plotted the top 120 use cases below, with the y-axis shows the volume of available data (encompassing its breadth and frequency), while the x-axis shows the potential impact, based on surveys of more than 600 industry experts. The size of the bubble reflects the diversity of the available data sources.
Designing an appropriate organizational structure to support data and analytics activities (45%), Ensuring senior management involvement (42%), and designing effective data architecture and technology infrastructure (36%) are the three most significant challenges to attaining data and analytics objectives. McKinsey found that the barriers break into the three categories: strategy, leadership, and talent; organizational structure and processes; and technology infrastructure. Approximately half of executives across geographies and industries reported greater difficulty recruiting analytical talent than any other kind of talent. 40% say retention is also an issue.
U.S. retailer supply chain operations who have adopted data and analytics have seen up to a 19% increase in operating margin over the last five years. Using data and analytics to improve merchandising including pricing, assortment, and placement optimization is leading to an additional 16% in operating margin improvement. The following table illustrates data and analytics’ contribution to U.S. retail operations by area.
Design-to-value, supply chain management and after-sales support are three areas where analytics are making a financial contribution in manufacturing. McKinsey estimates that analytics have increased manufacturer’s gross margins by as much as 40% when used in design-to-value workflows and projects. Up to 15% of after-sales costs have been reduced through the use of analytics that includes product sensor data analysis for after-sales service. There are several interesting companies to watch in this area, with two of the most innovative being Sight Machine and enosiX, with the latter enabling real-time integration between SAP and Salesforce systems. The following graphic illustrates the estimated impact of analytics on manufacturing financial performance by area.
Integrating ERP, CRM, and legacy systems lead to greater manufacturing innovation, setting the foundation to move beyond business models that don’t stay in step with customers’ fast-changing needs. Bringing contextual intelligence into manufacturing that centers on customers’ unique, fast-changing requirements is a must-have to keep growing sales profitably. By integrating ERP, CRM, SCM, pricing and legacy systems together, manufacturers can provide customers what they want most, and that’s accurate, fast responses to their questions and perfect orders delivered.
Integration powers manufacturing innovation
Enabling a faster pace of innovation in manufacturing starts by using systems and process integration as a growth catalyst to profitably grow. There is a myriad of ways integration will transform manufacturing in 2017, and the top 10 ways are presented below:
Real-time visibility across selling, pricing, product, manufacturing and service improves the speed of customer response and makes planning easier. By integrating legacy SAP ERP systems with CRM, pricing, product catalog, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and service, telling customers in real-time the status of their orders is possible. Having real-time data on manufacturing operations provides planners with the visibility they need to optimize production schedules, including fine-tuning Material Requirements Planning (MRP). By orchestrating these areas of manufacturing more efficiently, customer satisfaction increases, the potential of upselling and cross-sell improves and less order fulfillment errors turn into higher profits.
Making analytics the fuel manufacturing needs to move faster, attaining time-to-market goals and exceeding customer expectations. One of the quickest ways manufacturers are going to use integration to fuel greater growth in 2017 is by using analytics to measure operations from the customer’s perspective first. From quality management to order fulfillment and meeting delivery dates, every manufacturer has the baseline data they need to begin a customer-driven analytics strategy today. Integration is the catalyst that is making this happen. Making quality a company-wide focus begins with real-time integration of quality management and broader IT systems. enosiX has taken a unique approach to real-time integration, streamlining quality inspections and inventory control for beverage equipment manufacturer Bunn.
Improving new product success rates by integrating CRM, pricing, product catalog, service, and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are enabling manufacturers to create new product lines that drive new business models. For consumer electronics and high-tech products manufacturers serving B2C (business to consumer) and Business to Business (B2B), speed and time-to-market are a core part of their business models. Capitalizing on the speed of customers’ changing requirements is more important to stay ins type with than competitors, however. To do this, manufacturers capturing feedback from service and PLM systems and then putting it into context using CRM systems can innovate faster than competitors who track each other instead of customers.
Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) will continue to be one of the most effective strategies manufacturers can use for accelerating sales in 2017, made possible by the real-time integration between ERP, CRM, pricing and manufacturing systems. Winning new customers and closing deals often comes down to being faster than competitors at delivering accurate, complete quotes and proposals. By integrating CRM, ERP, and pricing systems manufacturers can trim days and in some cases weeks and months off of how long it takes to produce a quote or proposal. CPQ will continue to accelerate in 2017, gaining momentum as more manufacturers move beyond their manually-based methods of quoting and opt for more integrated approaches to excelling at this vital selling activity.
Industry 4.0’s many advantages including creating smart factories are dependent on the real-time integration of traditional IT and manufacturing systems increasing production speed and quality. Engraining greater contextual intelligence into every phase of manufacturing increases shop-floor visibility. It also makes planning more efficient and customer-driven. The key to revitalizing existing production centers and getting them started on the journey to becoming smart factories depends on the real-time integration of IT and manufacturing systems.
Personalizing pricing strategies by customer persona and segment using real-time integration between CRM, pricing, accounting and finance systems to optimize profitability. Manufacturers doing this today also have propensity models that define which customers are most and least likely to accept up-sell and cross-sell offers. For many manufacturers, this level of pricing precision is possible today with greater systems integration. By having pricing strategies defined by persona and segment, measuring just how much speed and time-to-market matters to each is possible by measuring sales rates of new products and services.
IT system security companywide improves with tighter real-time integration as long-standing legacy systems are updated to enable greater connectivity with newer systems. When manufacturers choose to pursue a more focused, urgent strategy of systems integration to improve manufacturing performance, system security often improves companywide. It’s because longstanding legacy systems, often the most vulnerable to unauthorized use, get re-evaluated at the operating system and integration levels. The result is company-wide IT security improves when real-time integration is attained. For manufacturers where 70% or more of their materials and costs are from outside their owned production centers, this is more important in 2017 than ever before.
Sensor data generated from the Internet of Things (IoT) combined with advanced analytics is transforming manufacturing today and will accelerate in 2017. Manufacturers with globally-based operations are piloting and using IoT strategies in daily operations today. A few are working with semiconductor manufacturers to design in their specific requirements at the chip level. Having real-time integration in place between ERP, CRM, pricing and services systems provides the scalable, secure foundation to build advanced analytics and IoT platforms that can scale over the long-term.
Market leaders in manufacturing are designing in real-time integration to their connected products, enabling new sources of revenue. General Electric’s approach to monitoring jet engines in flight and providing real-time data to aircraft manufacturers including Boeing and airlines globally is an example of how integration is enabling entirely new business models. A global aerospace manufacturer who requested anonymity is working with integrated circuit developers Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm to create chipsets that can provide sensor-based data on an entire jet’s health in real-time anywhere in the world, anytime.
Greater visibility and speed are coming to supply chains, enabling manufacturers the ability to take an accepted quote and turn it into build instructions in real-time. Automating the steps of taking a quote and turning it into a bill of materials, scheduling the best possible work teams, and orchestrating parts and materials all is becoming automated from quote approval. From a customer’s perspective, all they see is the approved quote and activity starting immediately to provide the products they ordered. By having this level fo real-time supply chain integration, speed becomes the new normal and customer expectations are met and often exceeded.
Integrating ERP, CRM, and legacy systems lead to greater manufacturing innovation, setting the foundation to move beyond business models that don’t stay in step with customers’ fast-changing needs. Bringing contextual intelligence into manufacturing that centers on customers’ unique, fast-changing requirements is a must-have to keep growing sales profitably. By integrating ERP, CRM, SCM, pricing and legacy systems together, manufacturers can provide customers what they want most, and that’s accurate, fast responses to their questions and perfect orders delivered.
Integration powers manufacturing innovation
Enabling a faster pace of innovation in manufacturing starts by using systems and process integration as a growth catalyst to profitably grow. There is a myriad of ways integration will transform manufacturing in 2017, and the top 10 ways are presented below:
Real-time visibility across selling, pricing, product, manufacturing and service improves the speed of customer response and makes planning easier. By integrating legacy SAP ERP systems with CRM, pricing, product catalog, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and service, telling customers in real-time the status of their orders is possible. Having real-time data on manufacturing operations provides planners with the visibility they need to optimize production schedules, including fine-tuning Material Requirements Planning (MRP). By orchestrating these areas of manufacturing more efficiently, customer satisfaction increases, the potential of upselling and cross-sell improves and less order fulfillment errors turn into higher profits.
Making analytics the fuel manufacturing needs to move faster, attaining time-to-market goals and exceeding customer expectations. One of the quickest ways manufacturers are going to use integration to fuel greater growth in 2017 is by using analytics to measure operations from the customer’s perspective first. From quality management to order fulfillment and meeting delivery dates, every manufacturer has the baseline data they need to begin a customer-driven analytics strategy today. Integration is the catalyst that is making this happen. Making quality a company-wide focus begins with real-time integration of quality management and broader IT systems. enosiX has taken a unique approach to real-time integration, streamlining quality inspections and inventory control for beverage equipment manufacturer Bunn.
Improving new product success rates by integrating CRM, pricing, product catalog, service, and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are enabling manufacturers to create new product lines that drive new business models. For consumer electronics and high-tech products manufacturers serving B2C (business to consumer) and Business to Business (B2B), speed and time-to-market are a core part of their business models. Capitalizing on the speed of customers’ changing requirements is more important to stay ins type with than competitors, however. To do this, manufacturers capturing feedback from service and PLM systems and then putting it into context using CRM systems can innovate faster than competitors who track each other instead of customers.
Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) will continue to be one of the most effective strategies manufacturers can use for accelerating sales in 2017, made possible by the real-time integration between ERP, CRM, pricing and manufacturing systems. Winning new customers and closing deals often comes down to being faster than competitors at delivering accurate, complete quotes and proposals. By integrating CRM, ERP, and pricing systems manufacturers can trim days and in some cases weeks and months off of how long it takes to produce a quote or proposal. CPQ will continue to accelerate in 2017, gaining momentum as more manufacturers move beyond their manually-based methods of quoting and opt for more integrated approaches to excelling at this vital selling activity.
Industry 4.0’s many advantages including creating smart factories are dependent on the real-time integration of traditional IT and manufacturing systems increasing production speed and quality. Engraining greater contextual intelligence into every phase of manufacturing increases shop-floor visibility. It also makes planning more efficient and customer-driven. The key to revitalizing existing production centers and getting them started on the journey to becoming smart factories depends on the real-time integration of IT and manufacturing systems.
Personalizing pricing strategies by customer persona and segment using real-time integration between CRM, pricing, accounting and finance systems to optimize profitability. Manufacturers doing this today also have propensity models that define which customers are most and least likely to accept up-sell and cross-sell offers. For many manufacturers, this level of pricing precision is possible today with greater systems integration. By having pricing strategies defined by persona and segment, measuring just how much speed and time-to-market matters to each is possible by measuring sales rates of new products and services.
IT system security companywide improves with tighter real-time integration as long-standing legacy systems are updated to enable greater connectivity with newer systems. When manufacturers choose to pursue a more focused, urgent strategy fo systems integration to improve manufacturing performance, system security often improves companywide. It’s because longstanding legacy systems, often the most vulnerable to unauthorized use, get re-evaluated at the operating system and integration levels. The result is company-wide IT security improves when real-time integration is attained. For manufacturers where 70% or more of their materials and costs are from outside their owned production centers, this is more important in 2017 than ever before.
Sensor data generated from the Internet of Things (IoT) combined with advanced analytics is transforming manufacturing today and will accelerate in 2017. Manufacturers with globally-based operations are piloting and using IoT strategies in daily operations today. A few are working with semiconductor manufacturers to design in their specific requirements at the chip level. Having real-time integration in place between ERP, CRM, pricing and services systems provides the scalable, secure foundation to build advanced analytics and IoT platforms that can scale over the long-term.
Market leaders in manufacturing are designing in real-time integration to their connected products, enabling new sources of revenue. General Electric’s approach to monitoring jet engines in flight and providing real-time data to aircraft manufacturers including Boeing and airlines globally is an example of how integration is enabling entirely new business models. A global aerospace manufacturer who requested anonymity is working with integrated circuit developers Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm to create chipsets that can provide sensor-based data on an entire jet’s health in real-time anywhere in the world, anytime.
Greater visibility and speed are coming to supply chains, enabling manufacturers the ability to take an accepted quote and turn it into build instructions in real-time. Automating the steps of taking a quote and turning it into a bill of materials, scheduling the best possible work teams, and orchestrating parts and materials all is becoming automated from quote approval. From a customer’s perspective, all they see is the approved quote and activity starting immediately to provide the products they ordered. By having this level fo real-time supply chain integration, speed becomes the new normal and customer expectations are met and often exceeded.
Gartner estimates the CPQ application suites market was $570M in 2015, attaining 20% year-on-year growth between 2014 and 2015.
Cloud-based CPQ revenue was $157M in 2015, attaining 46% year-over-year.
Gartner predicts CPQ will continue to be one of the hottest enterprise apps for the foreseeable future, predicting a 20% annual growth rate through 2020 with the majority being from cloud-based solutions. Legacy on-premise vendors including SAP’s Variant Configurator (VC) are going to face increasingly strong headwinds in the market as a result.
SaaS and Cloud solutions are driving the majority of CPQ market growth today, fueling greater innovation in the market.
The CPQ market continues to grow as companies replace legacy on-premise CPQ apps and outdated ERP quoting and ordering apps with cloud-based CPQ solutions.
These and many other insights are from the recently published Gartner Market Guide for Configure, Price and Quote Application Suites (PDF, client access required) by Mark David Lewis and Guneet Bharaj on October 27 of this year. CPQ selling strategies are part of the broader Quote-To-Cash (QTC) business process that encompasses, quotes, contracts, order management and billing.
CPQ market leaders also are offering solutions that support the creation of quotes and capturing of orders across multiple channels of customer interaction (such as direct sales, contact center, resellers and self-service). Cloud- and SaaS-based CPQ systems scale faster across multiple channels and often have higher adoption rates than their legacy on-premise counterparts due to more intuitive app designs and better integration with Cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Sales Force Automation (SFA) and incentives systems.
What makes the Market Guide so noteworthy is that it is the first research piece on CPQ published by a major analyst firm in several years
What makes the Market Guide so noteworthy is that it is the first research piece on CPQ published by a major analyst firm in several years.
Key takeaways from the study include the following:
Microsoft Azure and the Salesforce platform are benefiting the most from the intense competition in the CPQ market today. Microsoft Azure is emerging as the enterprise leader from a platform perspective, evidenced by the points made in my previous post, Seven Ways Microsoft Redefined Azure For The Enterprise And Emerged A Leader. Being able to scale globally and provide greater control over security and openly address Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) concerns of enterprises are a few of the many factors driving Azure’s adoption. Salesforce has gone in a different direction in the CPQ market, choosing to acquire SteelBrick earlier this year. Salesforce in effect became a competitor with its partners in the CPQ market by doing this. According to Gartner, SteelBrick is a good solution for high-tech assemble to order (ATO) and software companies. Last month Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff was interviewed at the Intel Capital Global Summit, and the video is available here. At 11 min., 20 seconds, he says that “Steelbrick is not for all customers, so Apttus still has a tremendous opportunity.” Earlier this year Apttus announced their entire QTC suite is now available on Microsoft Dynamics, showing just how critical it is for CPQ engineering teams to move fast from a platform strategy perspective to keep their companies growing.
Omnichannel and digital commerce is a high-growth area of CPQ as companies seek to improve buying experiences across all customer-facing channels. For many companies, their omnichannel selling strategies and initiatives are proliferating, driven by how quickly customers are changing the channels they buy through. Leading CPQ and QTC suites are now offering digital commerce and omnichannel apps integrated into their main app platforms. They are having initial success in B2B selling scenarios where self-service configuration is needed. Gartner mentions Apttus, Oracle CPQ Cloud, and SAP as having the most robust digital commerce offerings today.
CPQ vendors are attempting to reinvent themselves by innovating faster and more broadly than before. Relying on machine learning to recommend the optimal incentives, pricing, and terms to close more deals and increase up-sell and cross-sell revenues through guided selling apps is a fascinating area of innovation today. Apttus’ Intelligent Quote-to-Cash Agent Max, Salesforce’s Einstein and others exemplify this area of development. Rapid advances and improvements in visualization, 3D modeling and Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) from Configit also illustrate how quickly innovation is changing the landscape. Gartner also mentions intelligent negotiation guidance, mobile configuration support, estimated compensation, verticalization, and deeper integration with back-end fulfillment systems as being additional areas where innovation is redefining the competitive landscape.
Improving promotion, incentive and rebate performance across a multitier selling network based on machine learning algorithms is redefining the QTC competitive landscape. Eighteen CPQ vendors are profiled in the market guide, many of them selling into industries that rely on complex multitier distribution, selling and support networks for the majority of their revenue. It’s clear many are moving in the direction of using machine learning to improve the effectiveness of promotions, incentives, and rebates across all selling channels. Being able to provide the best possible incentive to a distributor, dealer or 3rd party sales person defines which manufacturer wins the deal. Look to see more emphasis in this area in 2017 as CPQ vendors work to provide companies with the chance to steer more deals their way in channels they don’t directly control.
The CPQ landscape will continue to consolidate as the race for new customers accelerates, driven by the need companies have for improving QTC performance. Gartner mentions how there have been major acquisitions over the last four years including Big Machines being acquired by Oracle, Salesforce acquiring SteelBrick, Configure One acquired by AutoDesk, and Cameleon Software was acquired by Pros. There are many other CPQ vendors privately for sale right now, with all of them looking to find an acquirer or company to merge with who can best complement their core technologies. Look to see the pace of acquisitions accelerate in the next year.
I’m looking to see which CPQ vendors further distance themselves from competitors with modern and intuitive user experience design (UX). CPQ, while a necessary foundation piece for B2B use cases is evolving into the broader Quote-to-Cash umbrella. To attain its full market potential, I believe that CPQ vendors must excel at UX across all products and app experiences. I am looking forward to seeing which vendors will invest in modern and intuitive UX to drive this change in the market and deliver great experiences to customers as a result.
U.S.-based organisations are budgeting $1.77M for cloud spending in 2017 compared to $1.30M for non-U.S. based organisations.
10% of enterprises with over 1,000 employees are projecting they will spend $10M or more on cloud computing apps and platforms throughout this year.
Organisations are using multiple cloud models to meet their business’s needs, including private (62%), public (60%), and hybrid (26%).
By 2018 the typical IT department will have the minority of their apps and platforms (40%) residing in on-premise systems.
These and many other insights are from IDG’s Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey, 2016. You can find the 2016 Cloud Computing Executive Summary here and a presentation of the results here. The study’s methodology is based on interviews with respondents who are reporting they are involved with cloud planning and management across their organizations. The sampling frame includes audiences across six IDG Enterprise brands (CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, ITworld and Network World) representing IT and security decision-makers across eight industries. The survey was fielded online with the objective of understanding organisational adoption, use-cases, and solution needs for cloud computing. A total of 925 respondents were interviewed to complete the study.
Key takeaways include the following:
The cloud is the new normal for enterprise apps, with 70% of all organizations having at least one app in the cloud today. 75% of enterprises with greater than 1,000 employees have at least one app or platform running in the cloud today, leading all categories of adoption measured in the survey. 90% of all organisations today either have apps running in the cloud are planning to use cloud apps in the next 12 months, or within 1 to 3 years. The cloud has won the enterprise and will continue to see the variety and breadth of apps adopted accelerating in 2017 and beyond.
Business/data analytics and data storage/data management (both 43%) are projected to lead cloud adoption in 2017 and beyond. 22% of organisations surveyed are predicting that business/data analytics will be the leading cloud application area they will migrate to in the next 12 months. 21% are predicting data storage/data management apps are a high priority area for their organisations’ cloud migration plans in 2017.
28% of organisations’ total IT budgets is dedicated to cloud computing next year. Of that, 45% is allocated to SaaS, 30% to IaaS and 19% to PaaS. The average investment organisations will make in cloud computing next year is $1.62M, with enterprises over 1,000 employees projected to spend $3.03M. The average investment in cloud computing remains constant in organisations with $1.62M invested in 2014, $1.56M in 2015 and $1.62M in 2016. 10% of enterprises with over 1,000 employees are projecting they will spend $10M or more on cloud computing apps and platforms throughout this year.
CIOs, IT architects and IT networking/management control cloud spending in the enterprise. In contrast, CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs are driving small and medium business (SMB) cloud spending this year. The following graphic compares how influential the following groups and individuals are in the cloud computing purchase process.
Just 46% of organisations are using Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) to integrate with databases, messaging systems, portals or storage components. 40% are using them for creating connections to the application layer of their cloud and the underlying IT infrastructures. The following graphic provides insights into how APIs are being used and which teams see the most value in them.
In 18 months the majority of organisations’ IT infrastructures will be entirely cloud-based. IDG found that in 18 months nearly one-third (28%) of all organisations interviewed will be relying on private clouds as part of their IT infrastructure. Just over a fifth (22%) will have public cloud as part of their IT infrastructure, and 10% will be using hybrid. By 2018 the typical IT department will have the minority of their apps and platforms (40%) residing in on-premise systems.
Concerns about where data is stored (43%), cloud security (41%) and vendor lock-in (21%) are the top three challenges organisations face when adopting public cloud technologies. Private and hybrid cloud adoption in organisations is also facing the challenges of cloud security and vendor lock-in. Private and hybrid cloud adoption are being slowed by a lack of the right skill sets to manage and gain the maximum value from cloud investments.
Deutsche Bank estimates Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has a $750M revenue run-rate estimate today.
The combined revenues of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP are still less than $15B for a market penetration of just 1%-2% of the Total Available Market (TAM).
During the 2Q16 call, Google called out cloud as the primary driver of the re-accelerating growth for Licensing and Other revenue, the first time the business has been called out in pole position.
Recent Orbitera and Apigee acquisitions underscore Google’s new focus and aggressiveness to grow GCP. Google has spent $1B+ on Cloud M&A over the past 12 months.
Deutsche Bank predicts GCP is preparing a series of new product announcements in September to strengthen their customer-facing roadmap further.
These and other insights are from Deutsche Bank Markets Research study, Google Getting More Aggressive In The Cloud, (client access) published 8 September 2016 by Ross Sandler Karl Keirstead, Deepak Mathivanan, Aki Aggarwal and Taylor McGinnis. Deutsche Bank found that Google is investing heavier in the cloud, making a financial commitment with over $1bn in acquisitions in the past year including the recent Apigee deal. The study is based on interviews Deutsche Bank contacted with channel partners, prospects, partners, and customers. Despite the renewed focus on growth, Deutsche Bank predicts that GCP would continue to trail AWS and Microsoft Azure for the foreseeable future.
Key takeaways of the Deutsche Bank Markets Research survey include the following:
Deutsche Bank defines the Total Available Market (TAM) enterprise IT spend in nine categories that together account for over a $1T TAM. Deutsche Bank defines the enterprise IT spending market by combining storage, network equipment, infrastructure software, IT outsourcing and support, data management software, BI/analytics, application software and consulting Deutsche Bank sees AWS make significant progress across a wide spectrum of their taxonomy categories.
GCP new product launches are concentrating on machine learning, data analytics and security, including data encryption and identity and access management. Google’s aggressiveness regarding the cloud is most visible from their new service announcements shown in the table below. Recent announcements include SQL Server Images, where customers can now natively spin up Microsoft database instances on GCP, akin to AWS RDS for SQL Server. GCP also announced a second generation version of Cloud SQL, its cloud-hosted alternative to MySQL and AWS Aurora. While all of these announcements provide GCP with greater potential to compete against AWS and Microsoft Azure, Google’s two larger competitors have formidable momentum in enterprises.
Aggressive build-out of global infrastructure locations continues. Google announced during their 4Q15 earnings call they would build 12 new regions in 2016 and 2017. Of the 12 new planned GCP regions, the US Western region in Oregon opened in July 2016, and Google has said that the new Tokyo region will be available later this year, leaving ten more regions to be added in 2017.
Google continues to believe in the importance of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Deutsche Bank interviews with GCP customers confirmed interest in using machine learning and artificial intelligence on the cloud. Customers also perceive GCP is well ahead of AWS and Azure in this regard.
Google is quickly hiring enterprise sales reps in an attempt to close the sales gap between themselves and AWS & Microsoft Azure. Deutsche Bank found that Google has been “hiring very aggressively” to scale its enterprise sales rep capacity and also retrofitting existing sales reps from elsewhere in Google into GCP.
GCP is gaining share rapidly within the startup community. Deutsche Bank spoke with customers who estimated that 25% startups are using GCP today (with 75% on AWS), while another estimated the ratio to be 20%/80%. While both agreed that a couple of years ago only 10% of startups were using GCP (with 90% using AWS). During the GCP NEXT Asia-Pacific keynote earlier this month Google disclosed that Snapchat “is one of our largest customers,” making up to 2 million queries per second and consuming more Google bandwidth than any other organization except for YouTube.
Recent Orbitera and Apigee acquisitions underscore Google’s new focus and aggressiveness to grow GCP. Last month Google acquired Orbitera, a small cloud commerce platform. Orbitera simplifies the buying and selling of cloud-based software by providing vendors with packaging and provisioning, billing, and marketplace solutions on AWS and Azure. Earlier this month Google acquired Apigee for $625M, which is 5.2x Apigee’s FY17e revenues of $120M. Apigee is expected to grow by 30%-35% in The company focuses on larger enterprises (Walgreens, Nike, Target, AT&T) and despite an ongoing mix shift to the cloud or SaaS model, it still has a legacy on-premise license/maintenance business.
Google is very focused on building relationships with all systems integration (SI) firms but that building out a GCP channel is proving to be challenging. Deutsche Bank believes that Microsoft is also finding it tough to build out its Azure channel, in part because many traditional partners and resellers struggle with how they can monetize Azure, given its different price points and the lower services attach rate.
