Cyber security is a significant sustainability challenge for every industry today.

Cyber attacks come in many forms and almost every week we read about another company that has had data become compromised, either from ransomware in a corporation or banking data captured from a retailer. How do you defend against those kinds of attacks while giving your people easy, but secure access to the site or asset data they need in order to efficiently make the best business decisions?

Maybe you’re looking toward digital transformation but you’re reluctant to move past the old SCADA system on a server in the utility room. You have that one for data monitoring, a separate one for accounting, and another for remote well control. You get different reports from every place, and your department heads spend days in the plot of 1984’s Irreconcilable Differences.

When you do the math for all the benefits of switching to a cloud platform built for industrial use, and then multiply it by the benefit of just how mobile it is and even how it can quickly help all of your systems play nicely together it adds up to a strong return and equals into a much smoother running operation, with much more efficient processes and happier department heads.

Towns and cities everywhere are increasingly challenged with issues of replacing water pipes, pumps and other infrastructure—sometimes after a huge failure. If a pump station unexpectedly stops, hundreds or even thousands of citizens may be without water for an extended period of time. Or if the quality of the incoming water changes, improper treatment may be injected, creating a number of possible dangers for citizens. Water management challenges are vast and only continue to amplify.

More and more utilities are finding the benefit of managing these pump and treatment stations with scalable, cloud-based systems like Emerson’s Zedi SaaS SCADA platform. Instead of the old, costly system of relying on drive-bys to check on pumps and facilities, our scalable, cloud platform can give managers peace of mind while reducing those costs all while keeping everyone's water safer.

Going digital, or Digital Transformation doesn't have to be riddled with complexity or long drawn out time-frames. In fact, it can really be easy, painless and fast and yet still make a huge positive impact on your business.

To stay competitive your company must focus on implementing new digital technologies into your operations to deliver more value to your customers and enable staff to do their job better and with less available internal resources.

To build a digital ecosystem for all stakeholders inside and outside your company means executing digital change activities. Emerson’s Zedi SaaS SCADA is a perfect partner on that journey. We serve various industries and can guide your Digital Transformation journey to your desired destination, and even autonomous operations.

Decisions, decisions...

It's mind blowing when you think about how much time most of us spend on researching different decisions today; household purchasing decisions, cooking decisions, child care decisions, car buying decisions, vacation destination decisions, even simple things like the best way to clean something decisions - any decisions life throws our way today we grab our phone or run to the computer to look and see what are the options, best practice, best deal and then move forward.

Now, think of your employees who spend hours sorting, cleaning, detailing and organizing operational data from multiple databases, locations and spreadsheets to simplify data enough to make a least one informed business decision.

I just gave myself heartburn thinking about that.

How companies operate and use their data will significantly impact how successfully (or not) they run their operations. With Emerson's Zedi Cloud Platform, we simplify the connection between sensors to get you the data you need to make better business decisions to achieve better-performing assets, streamlined compliance, and optimized resources.

The Great Resignation is far too real for most production companies to keep up with—in the past couple of years many workers are leaving old jobs to find opportunities that are better aligned to their professional and personal values and goals that usually also come with bigger paychecks, more benefits and even larger promises of bright days ahead.

Some people have left the oil and gas production industry all together to take a new path that isn't as volatile or have joined organizations that don't trigger extended family meltdowns at holiday dinners because select narratives don't support oil and gas production.

These are the same types of pressures on people as they start their career that usually pushes them away from the energy sector all together into something 'safer' or what they have been told is more socially acceptable also add to the workforce shortage.

More aspects of oil and gas operations are joining the autonomous operations revolution. Now the iconic rod pump is enabling significant improvements with its operations regarding efficiency, safety and production.

The sun is actually rising on a new rod pump era with Emerson's Zedi Autonomous Rod Pump Management that is now changing the way producers and operations work each day for the better.

What was once endless trips to the well site with only two typical outcomes, both of which are a problem: It’s working fine, so no trip was needed; or it’s been down for two days and someone should’ve been out there to make repairs and restore production—or clean up a spill—hours, or days ago.

Digital transformation projects usually require many complex steps. Each of these steps requires a well thought out, budgeted, and highly detailed plan. Who provides that plan will be your companies key to successfully reaching that desired destination for your operations on your time-frame and your budget requirements.

Many companies undervalue the importance of project management as a crucial component for project success. Instead the project(s) become everyone's baby; not one person. Strong leaders prefer to have one person accountable and responsible for the project as a whole; or as some leaders like to say 'one throat to choke' (I write that with a smile on my face and all due respect). This way everyone knows the exact time line, expectations and one person is in charge of the budget so it doesn't run wild.

The world moves pretty fast these days with all the constant change from every direction. To stay ahead of all the crazy it's important to consider all your options and then move quickly to implement your strategy into action.

It wasn't all that long ago many companies were faced with difficult decisions, and few of those difficult decisions are harder than layoffs. It's never an easy decision. But in a downturn, it’s a necessary evil to save the company as a whole—with great hope you can welcome those same talented people back when the inevitable upturn happens.

The hard truth is that before that upturn actually happens many of those talented people will have retired, switched career paths, started their own business or even traded their safety glasses in for sunglasses in a tropical paradise.

Companies can now measure almost every single aspect of business activity due to various analytic tools and management software. Often, they have advanced datasets to explore their performance because there are so many metrics to measure.

While navigating various datasets, anything outside the norm would be considered an anomaly. Different anomalies can have an enormous impact on business decisions, operational results, and management’s ability to respond rapidly and accurately.