Market analyses show that paradoxically, the industrial sector, despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has taken significant steps towards digital transformation. According to the report “Industry 4.0 – Towards Industrial Security” conducted by Polcom and Intel, one-third of the surveyed companies are already engaged in projects related to digital transformation.
According to Marcin Gwoźdz, CEO of Polcom, digitization offers not only increased security and operational continuity but also, typical for this sector, the automation of production processes and the protection of data that forms the foundation of a company’s market innovation. As our research indicates, digitization gains momentum through cloud computing. Enterprises that jointly pursue strategies for both digital transformation and cloud computing derive numerous benefits from this approach.
Large investment plans
The industry-specific report on the industrial sector provided many interesting data, including information about planned investments. According to the report, as many as 32 percent of the surveyed companies have plans to increase their investments. Only 9 percent of them have frozen IT investments due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For the industrial sector, the key focus is on eliminating production downtime and gaining full control over the manufacturing process. Digitization offers the opportunity to embrace innovations and significantly reduce the risk associated with production stoppages resulting from IT environment unavailability or inefficiency. It also enables increased efficiency and faster response to market demands while simultaneously reducing costs – comments Piotr Słanek, a Member of the Management Board of Protech.
Tangible effects of digitization
According to the surveyed companies, the digitization process yields results primarily in the form of improved quality, reliability, and automation of production processes. Consequently, this has a measurable impact on resource management, as stated by 79 percent of respondents. There is no doubt that all these elements contribute to better and more efficient customer service, the creation of new, innovative solutions and products, and, from the perspective of companies, the ability to build a competitive advantage.
Digitization is no longer a trend but a business necessity. Over the past few months, we have observed a significant increase in awareness among our clients at Polcom. Manufacturing companies, like entities from other industries, primarily want to focus on their core business, hence their accompanying needs are similar. These typically include aspects such as security management – both in terms of procedures and cybersecurity – ensuring business continuity, faster time to market, and compliance with regulations – says Marcin Gwóźdź, CEO of Polcom.