Harnessing The Power Of The Cloud In Your Manufacturing Firm
Like so many long-standing industries, the manufacturing world isn’t necessarily quick to adopt new technologies. Manufacturing firms have the scale and longevity needed to comfortably wait out the emergence of new technologies in order to see what’s actually worth the investment, and what’s just a fad.
Well, if you’re still waiting on the cloud, you should know that you’ve fallen behind. After all, the cloud is more than a decade old. If it was going to fail, it would have by now.
If you haven’t yet harnessed the power of the cloud, your competitors in the manufacturing world are leaving you behind.
Do you know what you’re missing out on?
Cloud Basics: What Is It & How Does It Work?
By definition, the cloud is a network of technologies that allows access to computing resources, such as storage, processing power, and more. In layman’s terms, the cloud allows you to access IT resources that wouldn’t be available otherwise – or, at least, not without a much higher expense.
Advantages include:
- Easily Budgeted Expenses
The cloud services subscription model offers the strategic advantage of low-cost, low-risk opt-in combined with a simple, predictable monthly fee. - IT Resources
The cloud has the ability to activate tens of thousands of CPUs. This unparalleled power can quickly perform deep analytics of your data, and process nearly any ad-hoc queries that you require. - Connecting Team Members
With cloud technology, your staff doesn’t have to wait for each other to be done with their part of the document or project in order to tackle their own aspect. They can all work on the same project at the same time to maximize productivity. - Simple Scalability
Cloud services have the unique strategic characteristic of being able to stretch or shrink to suit your current level of demand. This is especially useful for businesses of any scale that will change in size over time.
But that’s not all – the cloud even offers specific advantages to firms like yours…
What Does The Cloud Offer Manufacturing Firms?
- Increase Visibility & Lower Operating Costs
The cloud offers an effective way to connect the many disparate parts of your firm. By storing all the information about your firm in the cloud, you can access real-time insights at a moment’s notice.You can immediately call up data about inventory volume, production capacity, demand signals and more. This vastly simplifies your chain of communication from what’s happening on the ground to what’s being decided in the meeting, providing opportunities to save further on the costs of operating your firm. - Phase Out Decades-Old Software
Are you still using the same old line of business software that you’ve been using for years and years?As dependable as it may be (and let’s be honest, mileage varies) software like this has a core flaw – it only works for those who are fluent in it. After all, it’s not that accessible if you’re not familiar with it.The cloud can help with this as well – new centralized project management platforms bring everyone together in one intuitive cloud location. Now, instead of needing to be trained on unintuitive, outdated software, your entire team can make use of a modern, user-friendly cloud platform.
- Revolutionize The Way You Manage Data
This is a core benefit of all cloud deployments – store your data in the cloud so you can keep it safe, and access it from where you need to.By moving your vital data to the cloud, you can enhance your security, increase data accessibility for staff members and lower costs. Instead of storing onsite, you can reduce costly local hardware by storing your files in the cloud, where they’ll be safe and easily accessible by you and your staff.
Why Aren’t You Using The Cloud?
Whether you like it or not, the cloud is so fundamentally a part of the modern business world (including the manufacturing industry) that you need to be making use of it.
If you’re not already using the cloud for file sharing and storage, you’re way behind the times. But if you’re also failing to take advantage of the industry-specific features the cloud can deliver, then you’re missing out.
Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:
How Do You Know Network Outsource Is The Right Choice? #MSP501
