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Enterprise Minnesota Magazine - September 2011
HELPING MANUFACTURERS GROW PROFITABLY
4 Questions with Tom Kieffer
Position: CEO at Virteva, a Minneapolis-based company specializing in IT consulting, outsourcing and helping clients leverage the emerging Cloud (Internet) based IT services that are taking the IT industry by storm.
Role: Tom Kieffer has been an IT industry entrepreneur and thought leader for over 30 years. He is currently chairman of the Minnesota High Tech Association.
How can small manufacturing companies keep their IT systems up to date while keeping within their budgets?
An advantage for the small companies is the fact that cloud-based, or Internet-based hosting solutions are now available. Smaller companies can use the same tools or technology on a hosted, pay-as-you-go model that the big companies are using. Instead of paying potentially tens of thousands of dollars to own new hardware and software, smaller companies can pay hundreds of dollars per month to rent and pay for it as they need it.
What mistakes do you see business owners making when it comes to IT?
Most manufacturing companies have a really good handle on their supply chain and the efficiency of their manufacturing process. But they don’t apply anywhere near that same rigor to their internal systems. Because manufacturing companies are capital intensive by nature, they often feel their capital budgets are better spent on things other than IT, so IT has been a little bit of an afterthought in the industry historically.
Many manufacturers don’t always consider how they can use IT as a competitive advantage. They think of it as a cost center, when they should think of it as a marketing center—how they can use it to engage their customers better. IT can help organizations engage their customers in a variety of ways: with a better website, online order status, and demand planning to name a few examples. It’s important that business leaders raise their expectations of what IT systems can do to help them serve their customers.
If all manufacturers could make one improvement to their IT systems, what should it be?
Cyber security. Very few companies are adequately protected against external exploits and hackers, or internal computer and employee threats. More and more online thieves are now preying on the small and medium companies - easier targets because they don’t assume they are. Some of these exploits can operate quietly for months inside a company without detection.
Looking at the IT landscape, what services on the horizon will prove particularly beneficial for manufacturers?
Moving forward, we are going see more and more automation and data collection abilities. It will become easier to gather real time and historical information from the manufacturing production process and the entire workflow process in a company. We’re starting to see a proliferation of machines that are able to communicate on the Internet or on our network. Manufacturers should keep in mind that as the economics of IT continue to improve, they will be able to do more with the same IT budget that they have now.
©2011, Enterprise Minnesota. All rights reserved.Reproduction encouraged after obtaining permission from EnterpriseMinnesota. Additional Magazines and reprints available for purchase.
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