Gartner identifies top five business trends in manufacturing for 2021

Gartner identified the top five business trends that will impact the global manufacturing sector in 2021. These trends will drive business disruption and widen opportunities for manufacturers.

“The first response to the global pandemic for many manufacturers was to go digital in their operations as fast as possible,” said Michelle Duerst, research vice president at Gartner. “While going digital is the right path, it is not enough. The trends identified by Gartner can help manufacturing CIOs prepare for similar future disruptions in the long run and mitigate challenges such as lack of customer touchpoints, entering new markets or product lines and financial distress.”

The five trends include – digital and product experience, total experience, ecosystem partnerships, data monetisation and Equipment as a Service (EaaS).

CIOs can use these five strategic business trends to improve top-line growth by providing better experiences.

Digital and product experience is the combination of physical products and digital services for unique product offerings to B2B customers and consumers. The pandemic limited customer engagement touchpoints due to the severe lockdown restrictions globally. The combination of digital and product aims to address this challenge of providing an engaging platform that matches consumer’s expectations.

Total experience is about how CIOs can use technology and interactions to enhance, empower and embolden both customers and employees to improve their lifetime value. Using this approach, CIOs can identify the right platform that will connect customers, partners and employees.

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Global organisations can utilise ecosystem partnerships as an opportunity to grow not only in mature markets, but in developing markets as well. In manufacturing, ecosystem partnerships can enable all types of initiatives, such as earth-friendly packaging, enablement of underdeveloped/underserved communities and emission reduction through remote work capability.

Data monetisation gives manufacturing CIOs the ability to obtain revenue from digitising their products and services. The rapid digitalisation within manufacturing organisations creates large amounts of data. CIOs can share and monetise this data across the ecosystem. Using this approach, CIOs can use information as an asset, and create new services or enter new business models. This can ensure continuous revenue even when the business is disrupted by external factors, such as supply chain challenges or human resource shortage.

And finally, EaaS is a commercial model where businesses pay for operational assets through recurring operating charges rather than purchasing equipment. In this model, CIOs use embedded internet of things (IoT) technologies that leverage common IoT design patterns and industry frameworks to ensure asset effectiveness and find solutions to asset non-performance.