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.

For gas regulators, the need to replace IT systems can be for various reasons. Their system no longer serves their business operations, wants to launch new initiatives, or unexpected events make them re-evaluate the need for a reliable backup system.

According to local power companies, more than 4.4 million customers were without power in the winter of 2021 deep freeze in Houston, Texas. Cold weather shut natural gas production and pipelines, which refineries use in power generation. Widespread power outages and instability of external power supply forced shutdowns across the state.

Sometimes there are fears that ESG has to be counterproductive to the bottom line. You read about some organizations promising to blanket the globe with millions of carbon-capturing trees and realize that those trees are also absorbing a lot of capital. Investors may like the leaves in programs like that, but when those programs are fertilized with barrels of red ink, it’s suddenly not so appealing.

Fortunately there are ways to achieve both—and Emerson's Zedi Cloud SCADA Solutions can be a black-ink-producing, carbon-reducing and safety-enabling option for companies trying to achieve both. The road to digital transformation for increased ESG opportunities that present fiscal responsibility may be much smoother than you think.

While the benefits of digitally transforming your operations are well known—improved assets, reduced overhead, better data flow and greater safety—deciding whether or not, and how to get started can be daunting, to say the least. To jump from totally manual operations to a digital transformation journey could indeed be over the top, especially for a small to medium-sized company that often have people wearing many hats and already a plate that is overflowing with responsibilities, and extreme stress.

Your digital transformation journey, is just that; it's your journey! You can take that trip any way, on any time-frame and budget that makes sense to your operations. It can be made in baby steps, or giant leaps and bounds. You can take it a bit at a time and at your own pace, or if you're ready to put the pedal to the metal we can handle that too. But, we know every operations is at a different step on their journey, and what might feel right-sized to one operations may feel like wearing your pants on backwards to others.

Have you ever tried to give someone advice about something that was way outside of your expertise? I have made that error many, many times. When I make the error of an unsolicited suggestion on something (usually to my friends on subjects like fashion, hair styles or anything related), I'm occasionally told to "stay in my lane." It quickly sets things into perspective for me, and I retreat, with a smile, knowing they're totally right; I'm way, way, way out of my lane offering advice about a topic I clearly do not fully understand or have taken the time into learning enough about.

They're totally right, I should stay in my own lane.

When it comes to data security, you're busy, and we completely understand that making sure your operational data is secure may not be always top of mind to you, or your highest priority at all times. After all, the last thing most people have time for is to worry about the security of operational data, because well, they're already very busy making sure a million other operational decisions are made really well, promises kept, employees remain productive, all the while with goals and targets continuously being achieved, or even better; exceeded.

To ecstatic employees everywhere, more and more companies are moving from dreaded, time wasting daily site trips, stacks of paper records and mind-numbing manual processes to technology to provide answers that are supported by factual data, automating tasks that are driven by analytics, data trends and in some cases even autonomous actions.

Downturns, and all the crazy in our world today have made it clear that the “change or die” mantra is far too real.

You probably already knew this—but you may be hesitant to act. That's totally understandable since there are several questions about transition, affordability, training, the return on investment and so many others. Then there's the sustainability questions that come into play. Tech changes really fast these days and everyone is searching for the next best thing. While tech continues to quickly develop some people decide they should wait it out until the next hottest and newest change is available.

You may ask yourself; where exactly do you get the best possible return on investment when it comes to industrial tech that will help support your operations profitability and sustainability at the same time without it being out of date in just a few months only to have to start all over again?

You’ve probably already decided that digitally transforming your operations is necessary as you face a shrinking workforce and tighter budget dollars. The productivity advantages of a full cloud software strategy implementation are many and well documented.

Like cars, snowflakes and superheroes, no two cloud computing service providers are exactly alike, nor are their customers. So, when picking a cloud software provider, it’s important to know if they can adapt or customize their system to exactly what you need (or don't need), or if you’re supposed to bend your procedures to someone’s limited, out-of-the-box configuration.

Here are some questions to ask before you decide:

1. Can the vendor’s system easily fit with the hardware you may already have?
2. Can the new system seamlessly integrate your historical data with the new input they’ll gather?
3. Are Project Managers available to handle all the details?
4. Will the vendor provide the reports you need, by format, frequency, user authorization and department needs?
5. Do they provide ongoing support?

Operational reporting is imperative for any business, regardless of size or industry. Reports provide a means to track and analyze your operations' performance and overall health while identifying areas for improvement and insights for future growth.

Consistent reporting and monitoring of operations inform senior management and other stakeholders about what is happening within their organization.

When we decide to integrate new features into our cloud-native Zedi IIot platform, we carefully analyze how features will benefit you in improving your operations.

Recently we had a customer looking for a cloud-based platform that could accurately monitor their tank inventory levels and their own customers inventory levels, which they are responsible for keeping full.

Building on their strategy to transform their business digitally meant understanding their business needs today to prepare for tomorrow. Our customer required accessible tank data to reduce site visits, increase safety, uptime, and profitability.