Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 - (Page 36)

S OFTWARE Manufacturers Face SaaS HURDLES Business transformation rarely happens without a little help from technology. The appeal of fast-start, pay-as-you-go, online IT solutions is gathering pace among European manufacturers, but companies still face challenges making software-as-a-service work in the real world. B Y PA U L T A T E n early July, general manager Nick Lindhop hopes to unveil a set of tools that will drive an era of unprecedented growth at British specialist chemicals manufacturer Pentagon Chemicals Ltd. He will introduce an entirely new online, on-demand business platform across the €55 million company. Pentagon, which produces base chemicals for the agribusiness and pharmaceutical intermediaries at two sites in the United Kingdom, will become one of the earliest European manufacturers to go live with SAP’s new Business by Design ser vice — delivered almost entirely over the Internet as software-as-aservice (SaaS). “Building software platforms is not our strength,” Lindhop says. “Our strength is in chemical processes, product development, and manufacturing in a safe way, but we rapidly need a new technology platform that helps us compete with large organisations and Asian companies. We need better information, better visibility, and a better grip on our supply chain. We need it quickly.” Pentagon is just one of many fast-growth European small and medium-sized manufacturers and established global corporations now trialing the SaaS deliver y method as a fast-start option for deploying new IT applications. The promise of SaaS seems appealing — ready-made business applications on demand, online, with minimal up-front investment, all the hassle of security and updates taken care of by the supplier, and ready to roll in weeks rather than years. Well, that’s the theory. It isn’t always that simple — especially when you’re trying to run your online SaaS platform across many countries. “One tip that I would give everybody, and we found this out only in the middle of our rollout, was that the Internet infrastructure in some parts of the world is not as advanced as we thought,” says Ulla Hiekkanen-Mäkelä, assistant vice president of strategic customer management at the world’s fourth-largest lift maker, Kone, in Espoo, Finland. “We had to do a full technical evaluation of our own servers across the world,” she says, “[and] then some corrective action to solve the problem. It’s a prerequisite for this stuff.” i 36 September 2008 Photo: Gianluca Padovani

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Opinion By David Humphrey Starters Road Trip Part 1: Innovation or Efficiency? Part 2: The Innovation Gap Opinion By Lisa Bodell Special Report: Great Aspirations Supply Chain: The New Money Machine Product Design: Fruehauf Gets into High Gear with 3D CAD Business Intelligence: Food Distributor Turns Up the Heat on Manufacturers Software: Manufacturers Face SaaS Hurdles Dialogue Opinion By Pierfrancesco Manenti

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

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