So you’ve installed sensors and remote controls all through your operations and your facilities; both near the office and far, far away from anything and anyone.

Great start! But, you may be asking yourself; now what?

Let us show you what you've really got - It's a bit like buying a new sporty convertible car and then taking it out for a drive for the first time. The new car smell is still fresh and you aren't totally sure how it handles, how to put the top down, what it can do for acceleration or (more importantly) how fast it can stop; but you really, really want to find out!

You’re ready to see what it can really do, and it’s the same for digital technology. With those sensors and remote systems installed, now it can give you a lot of actionable data that can reduce downtime, boost profits and enable your employees to be more efficient. Let's show you want this engine's really got in it!

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.

Most people have become app-dependent in both their personal and professional lives. Mobile apps now allow people to do pretty much do anything from where they are, such as book a hotel last minute, transfer money, shop online or order food.

For operations, we built the Emerson's Zedi Go Mobile App, so field and office personnel will have access to operational data from anywhere, at any time. The app allows you to view real-time performance data easily, analyze and trend graphs, input operational data, change settings, issue commands, create customized mobile forms, and update control systems from the convenience of a smartphone.

The next wave of technological advancements is emerging. New technologies are expected to reduce the number of workers required to perform specific tasks while increasing demand for other skills.

A digital workforce is a workforce with personnel focused on high-value tasks and empowered with actionable data from digital technologies and services that lead to improved decision-making in daily operations. Similarly, a digital worker is considered an individual that applies actionable data from digital technologies and services to make improved decisions, automate manual functions, increase productivity, or convert information into revenue. 

More talent will be retiring in the next couple of years, making it more crucial than ever for you to strategize your workforce by upskilling your people to continue running operations effectively.

There's a new sense of confidence that companies can remain operational with improved efficiencies by employing digital tools, reducing costs, and acquiring the best assets. For a long time, companies kept operations going during challenging times by decreasing operating costs, deferring maintenance expenses, divesting properties with higher costs, cutting production, and laying off personnel. Instead of relying on these traditional methods, focus on creating digital operations by deploying and utilizing the right IIoT (industrial Internet of Things) strategy for your organization.

Taking advantage of IIoT technologies and strategizing your digital journey to improve work processes, add security, increase production, free your workforce, and begin the path to operational excellence that delivers stronger, more sustainable returns that can easily be layered on to your current SCADA system to bring it to the next level of insights, mobility and actionable analytics.

When your work requires a plentiful flow of liquids stored in tanks, you need to monitor those levels to keep them from getting empty. Here’s how we helped a customer do that across their whole territory.

In Pennsylvania we have a great Customer who provides lubricants such as oils for gear assemblies and other industrial applications. Often, deliveries were initiated by a customer calling in to report an empty tank and requesting an immediate delivery, which could be on a weekend. While happy to oblige, our client needed a more predictable and efficient procedure for planning delivery routes.

Already using Emerson’s Rosemount^TM system to monitor their own tank levels, they needed to create alarms there—and they were looking to monitor and alarm client tanks as well. We were excited about the opportunity to add Emerson's Zedi Access a cloud-based platform and Alarm Management Services to the mix.

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?