Traditionally, organizations operated through linear value chains wherein a sequential flow of information and resources focused on delivering a product or service for the market. As the industry moves toward the new advent with emerging industry ecosystems and the ongoing Industry 4.0 (I4.0) evolution, it has become critical for businesses to transform and unlock the true potential of technologies via digitally-connected ecosystems. Only then can they offer seamless experiences through the combination of physical and digital offerings as the ultimate source of customer value. These ecosystems not only enable companies to use intelligent technologies to optimize process efficiency but also allow them to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.
Industry NeXT by HCLTech, powered by intelligent digital interventions and built on an Industry 4.0 foundation, brings a paradigm shift with a broad vision, clear frameworks, and growth architectures. It enables businesses to become future-ready by providing a strategic roadmap to manage their ecosystem life cycle. Moreover, with Industry NeXT, businesses can plan, prepare, and seamlessly transform for the next big industrial shift and cater to the unique needs of connected products, infrastructure, operations, and users.
Rise of value ecosystems: Moving past linear value chains
With evolving consumer expectations, the emergence of transformational technologies, and the evolution of Industry 4.0, the traditional value chains have failed to serve the purpose. They lack real-time data updates, provide limited visibility, have slow processes, and are not capable enough to adapt to the changing market conditions. To cope with these limitations and thrive in this constantly changing environment, companies need a highly flexible, responsive, personalized, and sustainable way to address complex operational and business challenges and accelerate their operations.
Adopting Industry NeXT will not only enable companies to focus more on adding value through blended offerings of products and services but will also give several opportunities to create new revenue streams by leveraging cognitive ecosystems. Moreover, moving beyond the limitations of traditional value chains characterized by a linear flow of information to a next-generation cognitive ecosystem can also improve time to market, operational resilience, and agility.
Leveraging ecosystem integration to create more value
As the Industry 4.0 evolution continues, businesses need to leverage the power of cognitive ecosystems to maximize customer lifetime value and gain a competitive edge. Technology-enabled cognitive ecosystems place customers at the center with all the ecosystem elements aligned and connected via the digital thread.1 They also help global companies to come together and simplify the collective action plan to achieve a collective value proposition of Net Zero goals. With Industry NeXT, businesses can digitally reinvent their operations by dynamically managing their overall ecosystem and sub-ecosystems. It offers ecosystem stakeholders a flexible set of solutions that can help reduce cycle times, accelerate innovation, and optimize cost savings.
Adopting new-age technology and innovative solutions to build connected ecosystems
In a complex VUCA environment, traditional approaches to delivering value have become outdated. The need of the hour is to rethink the relevance of each of the components that create a value ecosystem. The connected ecosystems backed by new-age technologies offer enormous opportunities to innovate, grow, and create more value. They can connect people, organizations, processes, products, and services. HCLTech’s Industry NeXT provides businesses with a strategic roadmap to digitally reinvent their operations by utilizing next-generation intelligent technologies, such as digital thread,1 5G2/AR3/VR4, hyperscaler,5 and blockchain.6 With these advanced technologies, businesses can quickly identify, analyze, determine, and accurately predict consumer behavior and forecast sales to deliver better value throughout the customer life cycle.
Industry NeXT provides businesses a strategic roadmap to digitally reinvent their operations
Conclusion
Cognitive value ecosystems help companies become more resilient, flexible, and sustainable in the competitive market. They offer immense opportunities for businesses to rethink the entire value creation process. With Industry NeXT, companies can combine the complete range of I4.0 technologies and modern intelligent technologies, such as digital twin, digital thread, 5G, XR, and cognitive computing, to address unique challenges across different industrial domains. Moreover, companies that have invested or planning to invest in I4.0 can also leverage Industry NeXT to integrate workflows with intelligent systems, optimize process efficiency strategically, and extend beyond the physical value potential.
To know more about Industry NeXT by HCLTech, please visit https://www.hcltech.com/Internet-of-Things-IoT/industry-next or write to us at iotworks@hcl.com.
Glossary
1: The digital thread is the digital representation of the value chain from product design and engineering to manufacturing, after-market, and product-in-use. The digital thread is not limited to internal entities only; it also connects design suppliers, manufacturing suppliers, and services partners. Source: HFS
2: 5G is the next-generation cellular standard after 4G. It has been defined across several global standards bodies, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3GPP and ETSI. The official ITU specification, International Mobile Telecommunications-2020, targets maximum downlink and uplink throughputs of 20 Gbps and 10 Gbps, respectively; latency below 5 ms endpoint to RAN; and massive scalability, although initial deployments may be less ambitious. New system architecture includes core network slicing and edge computing. Source: Gartner
3: Augmented reality (AR) is the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio and other virtual enhancements integrated with real-world objects. It is this "real world" element that differentiates AR from virtual reality. AR integrates and adds value to the user's interaction with the real world, versus a simulation. Source: Gartner
4. Virtual reality (VR) provides a computer-generated 3D environment (including both computer graphics and 360-degree video) that surrounds a user and responds to an individual’s actions in a natural way, usually through immersive head-mounted displays. Gesture recognition or handheld controllers provide hand and body tracking, and haptic (or touch-sensitive) feedback may be incorporated. Room-based systems provide a 3D experience while moving around large areas, or they can be used with multiple participants. Source: Gartner
5: The ability to seamless provide an architecture along with memory, computation, storage, and networking resources to a given node(s) that make larger computing, distributed computing, or grid computing environments in order to scale in response to demand. Source: Author
6: A blockchain is an expanding list of cryptographically signed, irrevocable transactional records shared by all participants in a network. Each record contains a time stamp and reference links to previous transactions. With this information, anyone with access rights can trace back a transactional event, at any point in its history, belonging to any participant. A blockchain is one architectural design of the broader concept of distributed ledgers. Source: Gartner
