I am pleased to present a Q&A session we recently held with Jim Gillespie, the CEO and co-founder of GrayMatter, a leading Industrial Intelligence and Digital Transformation company. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Gillespie to discuss key trends in digitization and technology adoption in manufacturing and middle market companies, including how COVID-19 has affected those trends.
Mr. Gillespie has over 30 years of experience curating technology and guiding the digital process for manufacturing companies. GrayMatter enables assets and people to become smarter, more visible, and more productive. Through co-innovating with companies in manufacturing, water/wastewater, power, and oil and gas markets, GrayMatter delivers custom-fit operational technology programs and solutions.
We would like to share some of the discussion highlights in brief:
Digital Transformation is accessible to the middle market. It has been popular with large companies for some time, but there is a misconception that Digital Transformation requires extensive IT capabilities, scale and resources. Middle market manufacturers can benefit greatly from digitization, to conceptualize their visions, or to address operational challenge.
A company can test forms of digitization through the concept of a Proof Point, which is a small proof of concept project that demonstrates tangible business outcomes using initial intelligence developed between GrayMatter and a client. This is a relatively inexpensive process and companies can gain transformational intelligence to drive operational improvements through such a test.
Over the last few months in the COVID-19 environment, GrayMatter has consistently observed how important resiliency is to their client-base. Thematically, this resilience need is seen through the lens of an organization’s people, operations, and strategy, and coincides with a shift in preference for investment and with how resiliency is achieved.
Digital Transformation is a journey. A business can’t expect to “check the box” for Digital Transformation and follow a predetermined set of rules for implementation and be done with it. Executive sponsorship within an adopting organization is vital to achieve impactful change and sticking power. If you have concerns about how relevant Digital Transformation is to your business, know that your competitors are doing this and that if you want to be best in class, this is an operational enhancement to consider.