MCADCafe Industry Predictions for 2022 – ProShop

The manufacturing industry was one of the bright spots for 2021 in North America. 2022 will see continued growth as supply chains get shorter and closer to home! Modern cloud-based ERP will continue to be a critical tool for making those supply chains more efficient, and the early adopters will continue to outpace the laggards. Those early adopters will continue to lead the critical resurgence of manufacturing in North America.

ERP Meets Cybersecurity

It’s impossible to talk about cybersecurity and data security without ERP.  Companies house critical data about their customers and themselves in their ERP systems. Keeping that data secure is more critical than ever, with hacking activities higher in 2021 than ever before.  Legacy on-prem ERP systems are typically woefully insufficient because most small manufacturers lack the IT infrastructure and to keep their system up to date and secure. And some cloud based ERP systems have little to no functionality for securing data such as not having support for password complexity regimes, two factor authentication, or even hosting on GovCloud type servers. Many manufacturers will be in for a rude awakening when they realize that they can’t meet the requirements for the new cybersecurity regulations that are coming into effect for the industry. Partnering with ERP providers that are investing heavily into security features and hosting options will be the most secure and lowest cost options these companies will have.

Increasing Reliance on APIs

As companies mature their digital transformations, going paperless and replacing manual tools with software, it’ll be increasingly important for their software tools to communicate with each other, freeing up employees from having to use spreadsheets, or copy and paste data between applications. APIs will be the primary way this is done and legacy software systems that don’t have APIs will further be considered “walled gardens” that don’t enable companies to use their software in a manner that helps to maximize efficiency.  Progressive companies will recognize the importance of having an open API and the opportunities that they enable.

Business Process as a Sales Tool

Any shop these days can buy fancy CNC machines and drop them on the floor. But machines alone will not instill confidence in their customers’ minds that any company will be a solid and reliable supply chain partner. What business outcomes (on-time delivery, quality, accurate paperwork) are reliant on are efficient and robust business processes – typically driven by software. Legacy, paper based ERP or QMS tools have such inherent shortcomings that they are no longer sufficient to inspire confidence in the end customer. We will see increasing divides between companies who seek to adopt the latest technology in software and business processes and are using those actively in their sales process, and those who cling to their “sunk costs” of outdated software systems and paper based business processes.

About Author:

Paul is the president of ProShop USA and founder at Adion Systems which develops ProShop, a revolutionary web based and paperless ERP/MES/QMS system specifically designed for the metalworking industry. They partner with shops who seek to push the edge of technology by going completely paperless, strengthen their ISO or AS9100 systems, combine all their shop software into one system and build robust business processes to achieve high rates of growth, profitability and performance.

Paul holds a BS in Industrial Technology and founded a precision aerospace machine shop directly out of college in 1997 using the concept of a “Franchise Prototype”.  The company quickly realized that current ERP systems on the market were inadequate for machine shops and started developing ProShop.  After growing the company to 75 employees and over $11M in revenue, Paul and his partners sold the company in 2014 to focus on bringing ProShop to the metalworking industry

 

Category: Industry Predictions

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2022 at 9:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.