For the second year in a row, we attended ABISS, the leading exhibition for innovation within Industry 4.0. This summit is entirely dedicated to industrial digital transformation and is the meeting place for everyone looking for smart solutions for tomorrow's organisation.
Our participation in ABISS 2024 was, just like last year, very inspiring. The many technical specialists who visited our stand provided interesting discussions about a wide range of challenges. There is nothing like direct contact with the people who experience the problems or challenges on a daily basis. Here are some insights we have gained.
The need for substantive conversations
During a discussion about event-driven architecture, an attendee remarked, “We can meet to discuss the project, but don’t bring salespeople. We want to talk technically with engineers.” We couldn’t agree more! No sales pitches, just focused, technical conversations.
The rise of ‘Best-of-Breed’
For the first time at a trade show, we heard the term ‘Best-of-Breed’ in at least one in three conversations. This is a promising development that shows that more and more companies are striving for the best solutions for a specific need rather than working with an “all-in-one” ERP system.
Excel continues to endure
Despite the many digital transformations that companies are going through, Excel still seems to be heavily used. This suggests that something went wrong somewhere in the process. Of course, there is nothing wrong with using Excel per se. But when Excel is used in a structural (repetitive) way to store company data, combine data from different sources or visualize it, one can ask questions about the possibilities and user-friendliness of the business systems. Too often, Excel is used to compensate for the weak performance (possibilities and efficiency) of those business systems.
Few women in the sector
The low number of women at the event was striking. This highlights once again that the technology industry remains largely a male domain. We regret this and hope to see more diversity in the future, which is essential for innovation and progress.
Digital transformation without integration
Although many companies have taken steps in digitalization and automation, true integration remains a challenge. Often, after a first wave of digitalization (ERP, CRM, PIM), companies discover that they still have processes that do not fit into any of their systems and use data from these different systems (see paragraph on Excel). A custom application that facilitates such a process and integrates data from the various existing systems can then be a good solution.
Demand for AI, but lack of data
Everyone seems to want to invest in AI, but we find that few companies have enough data to fully exploit AI's potential. We are ready to engage with companies on how customer satisfaction can be combined with smart data strategy.
It was an exciting experience to discuss these topics and to discover where the industry is moving. We look forward to continuing these conversations and taking the next steps together with our customers towards an integrated, data-driven future.
