We can all agree that the heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 were our front-line workers and essential employees. You may not think that technology vendors are a part of that group, but a large percent has continued to supply the necessary equipment to keep the world moving and lead their countries on the road to recovery. Telecom infrastructure suppliers have come under severe pressure from both evolving operator demands and streamlined competition, and with companies finally starting to stabilize, they are now focusing their attention on strengthening their network architecture by embracing the cloud.
In fact, a survey conducted for a March 2020 report by Propeller Insights found that 97% of IT managers planned to distribute workloads across two or more clouds in order to maximize resilience, meet regulatory and compliance requirements, and leverage best-of-breed services from different providers.
With more and more companies realizing the importance of switching to the cloud, this opens up an abundance of opportunity for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) in the market.
Conquering exceptional unprecedented challenges
While OEMs have shown admirable endurance and continued resilience, these organizations and executives have had their fair share of challenges to overcome.
These vendors have faced new supply chain and sourcing challenges, which caused organizations to re-evaluate traditional processes and policies. According to a March Survey by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), 35.5% of manufacturers faced supply chain disruptions which caused them to look into other procurement providers. Organizations that primarily operated through an international supply chain were forced to look into local options and increase their reshoring efforts.
Another challenge that has always tested OEM operators are the constantly changing economic conditions. With a growing consumer base who want personalized products on-demand, in and out of a time of economic uncertainty, organizations must rely on solid business practices and innovative ideas to come out on top.
OEMs have had to overcome several challenges but the challenge one that has hit them the most and that one many organizations are still struggling with is financial issues. During the pandemic OEMs, like many others, took a drastic hit to their bottom line and were forced to downsize their organization. Even as companies begin to recover, they are not yet in a situation to re-hire furloughed workers. What used to be an issue of finding skilled labor has turned into a battle to be able to keep the employees you do have.
Even as the world returns to a sense of normalcy, the challenges of 2020 will not be soon forgotten, and the lessons learned through this period will be reflected on for decades to come. Luckily, there are many market innovations and industry trends that are helping OEMs not only recover but also set themselves up for growth.
Getting back on track and following the path forward
What the past year has taught us is that manufacturers can survive and stay ahead of competitors by leveraging emerging technologies to build a more resilient operational structure. Offering services that are customizable will be a growing trend in order to stay competitive in the market, and we can already see strategic partnerships forming across the industry to provide clients with top-of-class equipment and services.
It is important for technology vendors and service providers to solidify and strengthen their partnerships during this period and ensure that the solutions that they provide are flexible, to differentiate themselves from their competition.
According to a survey conducted by Futurum Research, “more than 88 percent of respondents say that existing OEM’s partnerships are helping them overcome barriers to innovation, with close to 83 percent indicating that OEMs had helped them accelerate their own product and services initiatives.” With the integration of more IoT connected services, OEMs are realizing the importance of these joint efforts with new partners that can provide cloud connectivity or analytics that can help drive much greater value for the end-user.
Technology vendors heavily rely on channel partners to deliver, integrate, and maintain their technologies, but often lack the well-developed channel partner structures required for successful execution. There is a growing demand for assistance with the initial planning, bidding wars, delivery, and maintenance of OEMs' systems, and the events of the last year have only highlighted this problem.
By solidifying the right partnerships at the right time, OEMs can gain an advantage over competitors to overcome the current market challenges, prepare for future disruptions and take advantage lead of competitive business growth opportunities.
Another major trend I see unfolding with OEMs is incorporating automation in complex areas in order to alleviate routine tasks from staff. Digitalization has become more important than ever before and the manufacturers that fully embrace automation will be able to provide more outstanding services. This can include client portals for ordering and replacement or implementing AI to evaluate data that can help OEMs make informed decisions with data-driven insights.
Where do we go from here?
This past year has accelerated the use of innovative technology in all industries and there is no sign of slowing down.
In some cases, technologies require other vendor‘s product(s), or the End Customer needs integration with the rest of the IT environment containing other products and services. Trusted and efficient partnerships are the key to keeping up with all these demands.
Customer’s needs and preferences are constantly changing and with those businesses need to learn to be adaptable and flexible in order to succeed. A good example where we can see this shift occurring is in the APAC region. The market in Asia has become more mature within the recent years and with more competitors joining in, it is making the global OEM market more vibrant and has set new and innovative strategies as the new standard. It will be interesting to see how these emerging change will affect the market in the long-term and how new industry standards will be set.
Now more than ever it is important for OEMs to capitalize on this market growth and to work together with their partners to provide complex maintenance solutions and support for their products around the globe. Time will soon tell who will come out as winners during this transitional period and the ones that do will help shape the future of network connectivity for generations to come.
