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As the technology landscape continues to change and evolve at lightning speed, CIOs and CTOs have more on their plates than ever before. For many, spending time on valuable business drivers—the ones that give your business a competitive advantage—takes the backseat to managing and maintaining an IT environment that’s increasingly complex. This challenge is diverse, with many tech leaders needing to oversee everything from vendor management, to rising cyber security concerns, to the many facets associated with maintaining business continuity. And at the end of the day, these tasks leave little time to focus on innovation. 

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Has your manufacturing company experienced considerable growth through acquisition or other significant changes in recent years? While change can be a positive thing, it can also lead to a lack of centralized IT control, in turn creating an IT environment that feels a bit… well, chaotic. This “hodge-podge” type of environment—one that’s characterized by multiple systems managed in functional silos—is actually quite common. And not just an issue among post-acquisition companies. This scenario applies to any manufacturing organization that lacks a holistic, well-planned IT approach.   

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The new year can be a good time to address head-on those same old IT challenges that have been lingering for too long. So what are YOUR manufacturing company’s IT objectives this year? 

Freeing up internal staffers so they can focus on higher-value projects? Gaining more control over fluctuating IT costs? Tackling the security beast?  

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Whether you embrace new and existing technologies whole-heartedly or with a sense of dread, the need for reliable IT support simply comes with the territory. For some manufacturing and distribution companies, the question then boils down to the type of support you need: in-house staff or remote, outsourced services?

Historically, the decision-making process for SMBs was more difficult, more carefully weighed. That’s been especially true for small firms who have had a hard time making the mental leap from handling everything in-house to having it managed remotely. But today, more companies seem to be accepting the notion that remote managed services are today’s new norm. Here are three significant factors behind this shift—and why they bring about good news for manufacturers.

1 – More Complex, Global IT Environments

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After a recent announcement, the word is slowly rippling through the IBM user community: IBM will be discontinuing support for IBM i 7.1 on April 30, 2018.  

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For major projects like an IBM i system upgrade, most companies will readily recognize the need for specialized, outsourced services. In many cases, this means seeking out a traditional managed service provider (MSP) to handle the system essentials – from performing the upgrade, to troubleshooting system problems, to ensuring stable OS performance. For the same project, that same company may also need application expertise and support — in other words, an additional resource to perform the application upgrades that are required to stay compatible with the upgraded OS.  

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When it comes to IBM i managed services, most small and mid-sized businesses think big – perhaps a little too big. Given the broad range of system and OS support services many MSPs offer, people often make the mental leap from handling everything in-house to outsourcing all IT-related processes and equipment. From hardware to hosting to backup, analysis and other support services, they’ll automatically envision an all-or-nothing approach to hiring an MSP. When outsourcing seems like such a major undertaking, companies with smaller, more intermittent needs tend to avoid the process altogether. 

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Many business professionals talk about "operational excellence", but few understand that it actually consists of several elements that must be successfully implemented and integrated to be successful. If you ask a dozen business professionals to define Operational Excellence, you’ll get a dozen different answers, such as “it’s about process quality and making perfect parts every time,“ or “it’s applying lean tools everywhere to eliminate waste.” Perhaps one of the best definitions I’ve seen is also one of the simplest, from business consulting firm Duggan Associates: “It is when each and every employee can see the flow of value to the customer and fix that flow when it breaks down.” 

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As the complexity of enterprise-level IT ecosystems continue to grow, the reliance of corporate CIOs on outside managed services is growing along with them to keep business apps and manufacturing processes functioning smoothly. 

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It’s tough being a small-to-medium business these days. Competition is fierce and costs are going up while prices are coming down. Technology continues to evolve rapidly but cash-strapped SMBs are often forced to make do with what they have for an IT infrastructure and business applications, putting patches on legacy systems and only fixing what breaks. 

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