Many companies struggle with legacy IT systems that contain key business information and processes, but are woefully under-equipped to handle the new business models emerging in the manufacturing industry.
According to Gartner’s VP Andy Rowsell-Jones and other experts, 70 to 75 percent of annual IT budgets are spent supporting legacy IT systems. Companies that sink budgets into systems with growing costs that bring no added value to production will struggle to compete in the age of digital manufacturing.
Your company has likely already begun updating your business model to let customer insights guide product development, compress innovation cycles, and offer rich customer experiences throughout the buyer’s journey.
The difficult work that may still lie ahead is upgrading your IT infrastructure to better support fast-paced customer-centric manufacturing. Organizations will have to shed entrenched processes set up for reactive manufacturing and adopt a single integrated IT infrastructure to support data-driven production and more intimate collaboration across teams.
To help small and mid-sized manufacturers work towards a more modern IT infrastructure, here are 4 keys for leaving behind legacy IT systems: