With something as expansive as supply chain management and as important as controlling the flow of goods in a world where manufacturing, release, and retail needs to be done in record time, there’s no surprise that there is an awfully big drive for innovation in the supply chain management space. With this innovation comes new terminology and jargon that might sound like it has nothing to do with the supply chain, but we’re going to see more and more of it in the coming years.
Just as we got to grips with ‘just in time’ supply chain management, we are presented with terms like ‘door to floor’ and ‘destruction of density’. Let’s have a look at some of these terms and what they mean.
The Internet of Things
This one has been around for a while and might most commonly be known for internet-connected gadgets that enable home automation and improve the lives of consumers with not much technical know-how by turning their homes into smart homes.
Examples of these devices are:
Smart TVs
Home Assistants (Like Alexa or Siri)
Google Home
Nest Thermostat Controller
Ring Doorbell Cameras
Philips Hue Smart Bulbs
In the supply chain, the Internet of Things enables a very different kind of experience for consumers. Products like the Amazon Dash and Alexa enable almost instant ordering, buying, and payment for items for delivery, and that’s going to be important for supply chain management.
Gig Worker
The gig worker is a bit of an anomaly in business today, but it’s one that has quickly become irreplaceable, and in supply chain management, this is particularly true. A gig worker is a freelance employee that is paid for doing a specific job but without contracts or any long-term employee relationships.
Examples of gig workers and companies that offer them are:
Taxi or Rideshare drivers (Uber, Lyft)
Delivery drivers (Doordash, Postmates)
Handyman or task workers (Taskrabbit)
Moving (Dolly, Burro)
Grocery shopping (Instacart)
Property rentals Airbnb, Rentah)
Virtual Assistants (FancyHands, Zirtual)
Gig workers from the perspective of a supply chain manager offer very unique benefits, particularly because you’re not hiring staff who might not always have enough consistent work to fill their days because you need them for times of surging business, like holiday shopping or when there are storms and bad weather.
It’s also beneficial from the gig worker’s perspective because they aren’t tied down by specific hours or to a single employer, and they have much more flexibility in their role.
It’s no surprise then that gig worker is one of the hottest buzzwords right now.
Supply Chain Digital Twin
A supply chain digital twin, at it’s most fundamental, is a clone of a physical and digital process of your business. This is used for a number of things in supply chain management, but perhaps the most common is the identification of risks and opportunities based on real data from your business. This offers supply chain managers the ability to understand and interpret data in new and innovative ways.
Some advantages of a supply chain digital twin:
Discovering and correcting bottlenecks in your supply chain.
Testing new innovations and changes in your supply chain processes.
The ability to monitor and report on risks and test contingency strategies.
Transportation planning and logistics.
Being able to optimize and monitor your inventory.
Forecasting your operational capacity and requirements for the near future.
Supply chain digital twin systems are big business right now and are only set to get bigger as time goes by and the power and usefulness of these systems are recognized and discovered by more supply chain managers and incorporated into more supply chain certifications and courses. Click here for a supply chain management program you can study online.
Supply Chain Impatience
This one is a result of our own desire for instant satisfaction, but it’s also one of the biggest drivers of the industry’s need to constantly innovate newer or better ways to deliver to their customers faster. Supply chain impatience is very much what it sounds like – our need to get our orders as fast as possible. In the past, it would be fairly normal for an online order to take a couple of days to reach you, but with companies like Amazon innovating with one day or even same-day deliveries with services like Amazon Prime, and taking advantage of the rise of gig workers (remember those), delivery is becoming quicker and quicker.
Some companies are even testing innovations like drone deliveries to get their products into the hands of their customers as soon as possible. This buzzword is only here to stay because you can be sure as soon as we hit one-hour deliveries, we’ll want them in half an hour.
Destruction of Density
There’s a reason why buying in bulk is cheaper. Buying a thousand of something costs the selling business much less than to sell one thousand individual units. Money can be saved in so many areas when the sales density is higher.
Less packaging is needed.
Fewer accounting transactions.
Less checkout or order processing staff.
Only one delivery.
Density in shipping.
It’s that last one that leads us to the buzzword ‘destruction of density’. In the past, shipping products and the rates you’d pay to ship these products would be directly proportional to the quantities you want shipped. Filling up a container with a product and shipping it is always going to be cheaper than shipping a few products. The rise of supply chain impatience, however, means more agile and quicker shipping is expected by consumers, which means businesses don’t always have the luxury of time to fill up a full container before shipping. This is where the shipping density decreases, leaving the business shipping costs to go up.
The challenge right now in the supply chain management world is epitomized no better than by the destruction of shipping density. The successful companies are those that embrace the ability for logistics and supply chain managers to use technology like the supply chain digital twin to streamline and improve their logistics practices to drive down the costs of their supply chain and ultimately increase the business profitability.
Augmented Reality, “an enhanced version of reality where live direct or indirect views of physical real-world environments are augmented with superimposed computer-generated images over a user’s view of the real world.”
The fourth industrial revolution is upon us and industries like manufacturing are taking advantage of AR technology to enhance employee experience, keep employees safer, and also close the knowledge gap.
Maintenance plays a vital role in industries like manufacturing. It has a direct influence on performance, productivity, and product quality; maintenance is a craft that is always being improved upon and now with the innovation of augmented reality, it can take maintenance to a whole other level.
Augmented Reality in Maintenance
Augmented Reality allows users to enhance their field of view with real-time super imposed digital information. This allows users to gain any/all information on an asset or step by step instructions on how to repair an asset, for example.
But before we dig into practical applications, let’s discuss the proven advantages of augmented reality maintenance.
Benefits
Reduced human errors
Reduced execution time
Reduced breakdowns
Reduced downtime
Reduced cost
Increased productivity
Increased operation speed
Increased fix rates
Increased compliance
Increased profit
These benefits prove true for the companies below that have already implemented augmented reality technology in their facility.
GE Aviation – Experiences an average of 8-12% in efficiency
GE Renewable Energy – Wiring technicians are yielding a 34% increase in productivity
These are just two examples of how AR is impacting the industry, but much has changed since the origins of the industrial revolution. From physical documentation, moving to the desktop, to the progression of mobile, to now wearable devices/technology.
AR powered solutions for maintenance and repair operations include:
Preventive Maintenance
Operator assembly instructions
Service inspection instructions
Detailed instructions for unfamiliar procedures
Compliance checklist
Corrective Maintenance
Service manual instructions
Remote assistance
Predictive Maintenance
Performance Panels
Real-time access to data: monitoring, control actions, disruptions, analytics
All the above have their own unique value, but let’s take a deeper look into the workforce and how AR is impacting engineers.
Technology in the Workforce
Facility managers are constantly looking at ways to increase productivity, decrease costs, and keep engineers safe on the job. These technologies below integrated with an EAM CMMS system can help achieve all those goals.
Infrared thermography allows engineers and mechanics to see electrical systems, mechanical equipment, building applications, and fluid systems through the use of thermovision. Engineers can spot faulty connections, abnormal motors, pipe temperatures and tank levels through this equipment showing different colors without having to touch the equipment. This reduces the risk of engineers getting hurt on the job.
A company called DAQRI is focused on AR technology and developed a wearable AR tech smart helmet for industrial use. Engineers can see 4D images above assets in their facilities that prompt them with instructions and also give them a mapping of all asset functionality. This wearable technology allows engineers to discover asset information faster and closes the knowledge gap for new hires.
Another company called UpSkill connects the workforce through augmented reality in its wearable technology guiding technicians in real-time to complete tasks, checklists, work orders, and send media to managers.
Finally, a company called Worklink has made it possible for the user to create their own smart instructions for assets to allow for less human error, increase safety, and also walk engineers step-by-step on repair processes. This can increase the time it takes to complete work by also complying with facility procedures.
This equipment is becoming more prevalent and as more machines becomes connected to the internet, approximately 50 billion machines will be connected on the internet by 2020 it becomes imperative facilities and industries adopt these devices and make them apart of their facility operations.
A CMMS has the capability to provide maintenance management and staff with an automated tool capable of scheduling inspections, preventive maintenance, managing inventory, work orders, and retrieval of recorded asset history.
Technicians can perform actual work with instructions on handhelds, enter how long it takes to complete work orders, filter through past work orders, and close out of the system. All the information is recorded in real-time, so managers can access the information instantaneously.
The ability to track your work, document it, and send it to managers could be paired with wearable technology, like the companies above, to get engineers an elevated view of assets through thermal technology or the ability to see instructions on assets and use that data to train new hires and not have to worry about on-boarding.
A CMMS could also benefit from machine learning using algorithms to monitor assets like meter readings and the ability to calculate readings by the second which would be humanly impossible to do; this will cut down on extraneous labor costs and allow facilities to allocate dollars elsewhere.
The possibilities are becoming endless when it comes to how IoT, AR, VR, and Machine learning can help facilities with energy savings, labor savings, employee safety, and more. The future is a scary and exciting thing but ultimately inevitable for change.
What do the tech companies of today and digital-born organizations all have in common?
Yes, Amazon, Google, and Alibaba all had a keen understanding of the sheer power of digital technologies. Dig a bit deeper. Many of the digital companies of today disrupting legacy industries are based on platforms.
The success of these unicorn companies are based on some core elements: the technology platforms they’ve built, and perhaps more importantly, the innovative business models these platforms enable.
As digital businesses shift away from the traditional business models towards interconnected ecosystems, technology is responding in a similar manner by progressing from siloed technical infrastructure to an ecosystem of enabling platforms.
Platform Takes Center Stage
Digital is increasingly the agent of disruption to the old commercial order and in the hyper-competitive digital economy; enterprises that excel are those that are harnessing the power of platform economics. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Airbnb are all platform companies. In fact, in its 2018 report, Gartner ranks digitalized ecosystems among its top five trends. So, as emerging technologies continue to develop, they will require support from more dynamic ecosystems that are based on new business strategies and platform-based business models.
These platform-based business models are quickly becoming the foundation of business innovation, with emerging technologies providing the means to develop increased value and create new business models performing at optimal levels of efficiency.
While all of these companies have thrived, the challenge has been to define the platform. Third-party analysts give various descriptions of the platform. Traditional and ICT manufacturers have launched a variety of “platform” models, but the industry, as a whole, lacks a clear definition.
Huawei is positioned as the digital technologies enabler and initiator in the digital platform and uses its digital platform to support the partners’ platforms.
In an effort to define and enable a clearer model of successful transformation, Huawei Technologies recently presented the company’s “power of the platform” approach at Huawei Connect 2018 in Shanghai. Huawei’s new digital platform strategy will enable governments and enterprises to accelerate digital transformation and achieve new levels of innovation and growth.
The X Factor in Digital Platform
Digital transformation cannot be achieved with any one single technology, and the value of the cloud cannot be realized without other technologies. To capitalize on the value of the cloud, terminals need to collect vast amounts of data and utilize networks for transmission. For Huawei, it is this collaboration that is dependent on its cloud-pipes-devices collaboration ability. It also represents the company’s most powerful capability.
With the goal of offering customers a long-term strategy to accelerate digital transformation, Huawei offers a “Digital Platform + X + Ecosystem” approach. This unique method puts the digital platform as the foundation, with new capabilities (the “X”) such as AI, IoT, Big Data, security, ICP, and videos.
Lu Qi, President of the Marketing & Solution Sales Department of Huawei’s Enterprise Business Group, stated at the event that the company’s digital platform offers three core advantages. “It is full-stack, open, and supports enterprises across multiple industries; our digital platform can be used in a wide range of scenarios, as it supports both private cloud and public cloud.”
By incorporating their products and solutions with those from other providers, Huawei is actually able to create an open, win-win ecosystem that offers customers the freedom to use the best solutions for their unique requirements.
Huawei’s Digital Platform Enabling Growth
At Huawei Connect, Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, said: “Digital transformation is a complex process which requires a systematic approach and convergence of various technologies to integrate the physical and digital worlds. Huawei is committed to enabling our customers’ platform-based businesses with an ICT platform that allows partners to integrate industry-specific applications. In this way, Huawei’s platform serves as the ‘fertile soil,’ enabling the growth of the industry ecosystem, and promoting digital transformation of various industries with our ecosystem partners.”
Partnerships and Design Thinking
For several years, Huawei has been at the forefront of digital transformation. Huawei is committed to working with customers in the long term and takes a future-oriented approach to drive enterprise digital transformation through the power of the platform. So far, 211 of the Fortune Global 500 companies (including 48 Fortune Global 100 companies) have selected Huawei as their digital transformation partner. This list includes SAP, Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Volkswagen, Oracle, Honeywell, GM, ABB, Intel, Sony, the Russian Federal Savings Bank, and more.
In the digital transformation journey, Huawei has embraced the vision that partnership and collaboration will be a bigger driving force than the technology itself. By partnering and guiding its customers in their digital transformation journeys, Huawei is strategically guiding each enterprise to their destination. The goal is to be connected, intelligent and cloud-based. Huawei is uniquely positioned to take enterprises on this journey because the company is able to provide a holistic suite of solutions from devices, to infrastructure, to services based in the cloud equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities.
Huawei teams up with customers and partners to create a vibrant ecosystem, meeting customers’ requirements in increasingly complex application scenarios, creating value for customers, and achieving a win-win situation for continuous growth.
Customer-Driven Digital Platform
Achieving positive digital experiences serve as the foundation for successful transformation. Customer experiences serve as the impetus for businesses to innovate, create and measure its overall digital platform strategy.
Designing a successful digital business needs to focus on innovating and attaining new business value, aimed at creating an optimal user experience. Consumers today, demand a faster, simpler, and enhanced digital experience that provides the best product and combines it with stellar service and most advanced technologies. These are all digital platforms that can provide enterprises for agile innovations.
Conclusion
In the next three decades, digitization will reshape every industry, and intelligence will have a profound impact on every enterprise. Digital transformation constantly impacts the way in which companies approach and operate their business. The speed and agility that attract many companies to shift towards digital platforms – which Huawei has done – have spawned new business models that have disrupted the way companies approach the consumer, delivering consistent value to the customer, inspiring enterprises to see beyond short-term gain, opting for long-term value.
In the coming years, the digital platform will continue to revolutionize traditional businesses models. While the digital platform model is still young, it is forcing enterprises to make strategic decisions that will undoubtedly impact the future success and viability of their business.
Disclosure: The author is a Huawei Key Opinion Leader and has benefited from their products and services. The opinions of this article, however, are completely his own based on experience.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming ever more prevalent in day-to-day life, with countless new devices being interconnected every day. IoT is set to influence the manufacturing of hardware and software heavily, with mobile app developers among those who will probably need to amend existing practices to account for the growth of IoT.
This infographic from ERS IT Solutions predicts some of the ways in which IoT is likely to influence the development of mobile apps. We will probably see a lot more apps copying the premise of Hive, which allows users to control their home heating from their smartphone. Indeed, many new apps will be created with universal connectivity and adaptability at their core. Apps which cannot connect to smart objects could become obsolete.
Companies could soon seek specialist IoT app developers in favour of those who are adept across numerous platforms, so app developers could be left with little choice but to adapt and hone their skill sets. See what other ways IoT looks set to impact on app development in the infographic below.
Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
We live in an era of unprecedented technological innovation.
According to Forrester Research, only 12% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 remain Fortune 500 companies today.
Why?
Most likely because, as Forrester research discovered, only 27% of businesses have a coherent digital transformation strategy for creating customer value in place. Yet, many companies are placing digital transformation at the center of their strategies through 2020.
Over the last few years, digital transformation has become an industry megatrend. Legacy enterprises are forced to embrace this critical shift out of fear of becoming obsolete.
Innovation and growth are no longer optional to the enterprise.
Today, enterprises use ICT technology to improve working efficiency, create business innovations, and provide better customer service.
For many of these Fortune 500 companies, the challenge is to develop new business models that increase connection and engagement. What’s needed is a digital transformation platform that connects intelligence, data, and devices, enabling them to increase engagement with partners and develop applications that foster innovation.
Cloud computing, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies are driving the human society into the smart era. The most striking feature of a smart society is the connection and fusion of the physical world and the digital world. The problems of the physical world are now being solved by the digital world.
As enterprises are constantly striving to attain new business value, the speed of innovation is crucial.
Companies need to be swift, agile and leverage all aspects of technological innovation. A truly digital enterprise uses emerging technologies as a strategic effort to go leaner, focus on agile business processes and enhance the business analytics of the enterprise. A digital enterprise relentlessly searches out, identifies and develops new digital business models, always ensuring that customers and employees are at the center of its innovation.
Digital Transformation
Digital innovation has become an essential catalyst and a driving force of economic growth. It’s a journey, not a sprint.
Designing a digital transformation framework for success is focused on innovation and attaining new business value, aimed at a creating an optimal user experience. To the point that the needs of the end-user need to be integrated into the service model. Consumers today, demand a faster, simpler, and enhanced digital experience that provides the best product and combines it with stellar service and most advanced technology.
The Digital Transformation Journey for Enterprises
Digital transformation is a massive undertaking, especially for larger, established companies. When done right, it will result in a business that is more aligned with customer demands and resilient in the fast-moving digital future.
Embracing digital transformation at the enterprise level requires a strategic approach that factors in all of the goals, people, technologies and required integration to form a proper strategy.
Digital Transformation, Disrupt and Innovate
A core function of any business is to continually advance and improve its operations, products, and services. Enterprises that adhere to a digital transformation framework are not only focused on improving, they are the key drivers of innovation and disruption. Equipped with disruptive and innovative strategies, these companies can compete in today’s fast-paced market that is being driven by consumer demands, new technologies, and new business models.
Why Embark in Digital Transformation?
Many legacy enterprises have built their business on certain methods of operation. It is these operating systems that have enabled the company to prosper and survive until today. The digital realities of today, however, are forcing these companies to reconsider and reimagine the fundamental systems that have been the keys to their success. The technological environment is changing, highlighting how ill-equipped these companies are to adapt and change.
Speed is essential in digital transformation.
While the speed of digital transformation may vary with industry, stagnation is the antithesis of the digital mindset. A company maintaining a static mindset in the digital era is paving their path to failure.
With external pressures – customer demands, emerging technologies, lean startups and disruptive business models- pushing the business towards innovation, the classic methods of operation are no longer delivering the expected results. As the impetus for change increases the need to design a strategic path towards digital transformation becomes inevitable.
While many companies may opt to slowly tweak specific inefficiencies, a true digital transformation requires a revolutionary approach. An all-encompassing digital revolution can revitalize an enterprise and pave the road to future success.
A digital transformation framework will guide the leaders and direct the business towards a path of progress. Businesses need to be in a state of constant evolution. Building a momentum and a rhythm reflects a shift in the mindset. It is a sign of a new reality and creates a paradigm shift for the entire industry.
Breaking the Silos
Digital transformation with its customer-centric marketing and business processes requires the ability to work across business verticals and silos. In fact, digital transformation focuses on cross-vertical collaboration, restructuring the organization to create methods that break down the silos. In a digitally focused enterprise, the goal is to encourage cross-department interface and to create an environment that is fertile for consumer-focused innovation.
Huawei: Strategic Digital Transformation Partner
Huawei Connect, Shanghai 2017
Over the past six years, Huawei has quickly developed into a global leading digital transformation facilitators. The rapidly changing digital landscape has enabled Huawei to take advantage of the new realities by providing new ICT solutions to customers, creating best practices for digital transformation, public safety, finance, electricity, transportation, education, and media.
Before enterprises choose an appropriate digital transformation strategy, IT and CT are now converging and transforming enterprises. There is no single technology alone capable to execute the digital transformation.
What is different about Huawei’s ecosystem?
Yan Lida, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
During my experience at Huawei Connect 2017, I was able to learn about some of the company’s strategies and gain insights into how Huawei is developing this platform and ecosystem.
During his keynote speech, Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, highlighted Huawei’s ecosystem that is based on three primary characteristics:
Huawei wants to become the customers’ most trusted partner. Huawei’s commercial model chooses to rely on the monetization of technology and services; it does not monetize user data. This is the biggest difference between Huawei and traditional Internet companies.
Huawei abides by its own business boundaries and is committed to becoming a platform for the platform. There are many companies that through their own experience in a specific industry have transformed into an enabler platform for that industry. It is very common to see companies such as GE, which is now providing an industrial cloud platform for the aviation and manufacturing industries. Huawei believes that it must create an open, secure, and reliable ICT infrastructure platform within its business boundaries to become the platform for its customers and partners’ platforms. Huawei’s platform is a cloud-pipe-device collaboration full-stack ICT platform; it provides all-in-one ICT services for customers and partners. The upper layer platform does not need to bother with the lower layer’s complex software and hardware systems; it can focus on its own service optimization and innovation.
Huawei is committed to becoming the ecosystem’s soil (the platform) to help customers grow quickly. This is why its plan for developers is called the ‘Developer Enablement Plan.’ This platform is the presence of Huawei in over 170 countries around the world. Developers and partners could use this platform for their global marketing and services.
In order to enrich this ecosystem, Huawei has laid out the plan of establishing OpenLabs, which cover all areas of jointed innovation with customers and partners across industries: public safety, finance, power electric, and manufacturing.
In the next three years, Huawei will continue to invest $200 million to build and operate OpenLabs (currently 13 and grow to 20) in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Americas.
Huawei provides a one-stop cloud-side collaboration infrastructure platform that integrates all new ICT technologies to help businesses stay competitive in the digital age. Huawei’s business has achieved rapid growth via industry-leading customization solutions for government and associated industries.
By carrying out joint innovation with partners centering around the business needs of customers, Huawei focuses on creating a win-win ecosystem.
In the transformation process, customers, partners, and Huawei each have their own unique advantages: customers understand their businesses, partners know how to transform the business needs of customers into industry-relevant applications, and Huawei knows how to utilize hardware and software ICT infrastructures to deliver effective business support to customers.
Partnering on the Digital Journey
In the digital transformation journey, Huawei has embraced the vision that partnership and collaboration will be a bigger driving force than the technology itself. By partnering and guiding its customers in their digital transformation journeys, Huawei is strategically guiding each enterprise to their destination. The goal is to be connected, intelligent and cloud-based.
Huawei is uniquely positioned to take enterprises on this journey because the company is able to provide a holistic suite of solutions from devices, to infrastructure, to services based in the cloud equipped with Artificial Intelligent capabilities.
According to Mr. Lida, “Huawei’s business positioning is to be a pioneer of digital social and intelligent social development processes, the industry’s digital enabler, and the best partner. In 2016, Huawei’s Enterprise business grasped the historical opportunities of digital transformation by focusing on infrastructure”.
Road to Digital Transformation Isn’t Smooth
Of course, the road of digital transformation from traditional ICT manufacturers to the enterprise market isn’t easy, even for Huawei.
Backed by six years of hard work, Huawei focused its ICT infrastructure and carefully chose partners with complementary strengths. By working together with its partners, Huawei has been able to deliver key industries with true digital transformation. The combined results have been to help public safety and government, finance, energy, and transportation enterprises to achieve digital transformation while still generating sales revenue of 40.7 billion yuan (about $5.9 billion) – a 47% increase from 2011 when the business was formed.
Smart Cities
In the field of smart cities, Huawei delivers ultra-wideband network, cloud computing, large data, Internet of Things and other facilities and technologies for cities to create a “nervous system” that enables all things to be interconnected in a smart way. Huawei has also been widely recognized for their participation in the smart city project through the “one cloud- two network- three platform”.
During the 2016 Barcelona Global Smart City Expo, Huawei was also awarded the “Southern Innovation Award” for the construction of a digital health system in Kenya.
To date, Huawei Smart City solutions have been successfully applied to more than 40 countries around the world and more than 100 cities.
Huawei Smart City (credit: Huawei)
At HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei and the Shandong Weifang Municipal Government ushered in a new generation of information technology. By including Internet of Things, cloud computing, and large data, Huawei is creating a NB-IoT city network and establishing the first city level based on the company’s OceanConnect IoT platform. Huawei has also used the Internet of Things to integrate various types of sensing devices to achieve data collection and management.
Public Security
In the field of public security, Huawei has continued to apply new ICT technologies such as cloud computing, large data, mobile broadband cluster, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence to the public security field. By working together with partners to build solutions to help cities achieve digital transformation, public security has improved and cities become more secure. Currently, Huawei’s safe city solution has served 80 countries, more than 200 cities and more than 800 million people in Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Technology and the Competition
As traditional industries enter a critical period of digital transformation to drive business innovation and growth, the cloud is at the foundation for enterprise digitization. To meet this growing demand, Huawei has launched a number of industry-leading ICT products and solutions.
Huawei IT products continue to innovate thereby expanding their role as a digital transformation leader.
With Huawei’s IT products and solutions serving more than 170 countries and regions worldwide, the company is setting a new standard for the future of digital innovation and outperforming its competition.
So far, 197 of the top Fortune 500 companies and 45 of the top 100 companies have chosen Huawei as their digital transformation partner. This list includes SAP, Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Volkswagen, Oracle, Honeywell, GM, ABB, Intel, Sony, the Russian Federal Savings Bank and more.
New Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is slated to disrupt the hi-tech industry and impact many other industries. The future of ICT lies in its ability to enable developers to take advantage the new technologies like Cloud Computing, Big Data, Software Defined Network (SDN), Internet of Thing (IoT) and Mobile Broadband to innovate their products and improve enterprise agility, efficiency and work in a more collaborative environment.
This revolution will only be possible when developers leverage the open platform and ecosystem to build their own solutions and realize their innovations under these technologies.
An ICT ecosystem is a business network that’s aligned among ICT vendor and solution partners to help enterprises work in an efficient manner. The business-driven ecosystem is lead by the enterprises who define their needs and look to solution providers to supply the relevant resources to enable their success.
Take supermarket shopping as an example. In the current system, the supermarket owners attempts to meet the needs of the consumer, often tweaking the solution without a clear vision or focus. The future will bring a personalized consumption model, in which customers choose products, identify purchase and delivery methods, and in real time their optimized shopping experience will be enhanced for future purchases.
Elion Resources Group in China is already testing this model out. The company uses the IoT technologies to bridge a connection between the farmer and the consumer, thereby fostering a collaborative environment that connects various relevant industries. In this new process, customers are transformed to active partners, allowing them to select the type of food that farmers should grow, allows them to track the growth of the produce, and allows the consumer to select the idea e-commerce platform and delivery service.
Similarly, banks are leveraging the new ICT ecosystem. Cloud computing allows omni-channel banking services, which manages customer data to reduce unnecessary steps in the banking process. Rather than going to an ATM or bank to withdraw cash, the connected consumer will be able to search for a vendor and process payments directly to the merchant. The streamlined process reduces any unnecessary steps and fosters direct communication between merchant and consumer.
The banking industry has always depended on data and security. With the new ICT, Big Data becomes an extremely powerful for the larger ecosystems that require responsive analysis of important data. It develops a variety of innovative services and improves the bank’s service accuracy, real-time performance and customer satisfaction. Banks such as the China Merchant Bank are benefiting from upgraded big data platforms, which can provide analysis of detailed queries and offer direct results. This increased accuracy enables a faster investigation of credit history and other important financial data and can provide accurate information in a matter of minutes.
In addition to showing the actual credit score, this data will highlight consumer patterns and behaviors to identify any risk factors. In China, the People’s Bank of China’s credit system uses data from other ecosystems and sources, including carriers and utility companies, to offer a complete overview of consumer behavior. The comprehensive data analysis enables the bank to look across systems and determine an accurate credit rating that is focused and responsive to specific customer trends.
Clearly, new ICT technologies are paving the way for new forms of cross system collaboration, agility and efficiency. This innovative approach is only possible when open ICT platforms and ecosystems are formed. Driving the New ICT technology forward is Huawei Enterprise Business. Their mission is to provide an open ICT platform and ecosystem where developers can benefit from building their solution using new ICT technologies. Once a specific industry has developed an application, it can be easily replicated and deployed on a global scale.
This new process is being accelerated by Huawei, who is working on driving innovation forward by creating strategic partnership with relevant companies. The ultimate goal of these strategic alliances is to develop an ecosystem that is sustainable and mutually beneficial to all partners. As the new ecosystem is formed, other industries including government and other complex enterprises will benefit from its success.
Some of us might be slow to adopt new technologies, while others will have the latest gadgets and software as soon as it appears on the market. People in the latter category have most likely embraced the concept of the smart kitchen, where appliances such as fridges, cookers and washing machines are programmed with unprecedented intelligence and can be controlled from your smartphone.
With the smart appliance market growing from $40 million in 2010 to $9.7 billion today, and projected to break $26 billion in the next three years, it’s clearly a market that is rapidly growing. Already there are numerous apps and smart kitchen products on the market, including the Egg Minder, which updates you on the number of eggs you have at home; and the Prep Pad, which detects the nutritional content of any food item placed on it. Meanwhile, apps such as How to Cook Everything and Jamie Oliver’s Recipes come stocked with enough recipes to suit even the fussiest eater.
This infographic from Pennywell shows that smart kitchen appliances can provide numerous benefits and make your household chores a great deal easier. If you want to learn more about fridges that can tell you what’s inside when you’re 100+ miles away, or ovens that know how much cooking time a recipe needs, then feast your eyes downwards to gaze into the kitchen of tomorrow.
The Internet of Things is a phrase we are encountering a lot more recently. It was coined in 1999 by Mr. Kevin Ashton to describe how specific Internet objects can communicate with each other in order to carry out a task. This info-graphic from Half Price Shutters in Australia shows how this is occurring in objects for the home which will make our lives easier.
