Without collaboration, we simply wouldn’t get very far in business. Industrial enterprises recognise that fact and are beginning to work together in mutually supportive ecosystems, creating integrated value chains that deliver a wide range of benefits. Such a business ecosystem is an integrated, trusted network of organisations, partners, suppliers, customers and other entities such as regulators, that collaborate and interact within a particular industry or market. Each entity contributes to and relies on the success of others.
Top performers rely on business ecosystems
In fact, for entire business sectors – such as ridesharing, ecommerce or digital payment – success hinges on reciprocal cooperation. Players within an integrated ecosystem benefit from economies of scale while driving sustainable outcomes and boosting innovation, flexibility and market agility.
Business ecosystems are strongly associated with success for top-performing companies, according to a PwC survey of 2,006 leaders from companies in the UK, US, Germany and Australia, with median revenues of more than $650m in 2023.
These top performers make more than 60 percent of their money from ecosystems. They build future resilience by making business and technology investments that enable them to continue leveraging these influential networks. Trusted data is the DNA of these new types of business ecosystems, and interoperability is their lifeblood.
Connected data creates a digital source of truth
As early movers are demonstrating, interlinking data across organisations and value chains enables cross-structural teams to collaborate around a single – and live – digital source of truth. When hosted in the cloud, such a federated approach gives each entity oversight of its own information alongside a clear understanding of the entire picture – all in real-time.
Think of it as the democratisation of industrial intelligence. Armed with richer insights, players across the ecosystem can make quick, evidence-based decisions to maximise new opportunities and enhance sustainability. In capital projects, for example, this kind of trusted, unified system built around a digital twin enables engineers across disciplines to work in parallel from a single database. All documents and models are automatically updated when changes are made.
With AVEVA Unified Engineering, risk is minimised and return on capital employed (ROCE) maximised, saving up to 30 percent of engineering efforts during the engineering and design phase, in addition to enabling down-the-line benefits. Greater competitive advantages will arise from infusing artificial intelligence (AI) across the system.
Not only do predictive and prescriptive analytics offer the ability to trial new concepts and forecast potential outcomes in granular detail, but AI algorithms can also drive continuous improvement iteratively, ensuring that products and services evolve in anticipation of customer expectations and evolving environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulations.
Real-time data unlocks new revenues
In California, the energy consulting firm ZGlobal and its partner Silicon Valley Clean Energy created a data-sharing ecosystem using two solutions, one to provide scalable, secure industrial data management and the other that was built specifically to overcome the challenges of industrial environments.
From power producers to purchasers, schedulers, suppliers and customers, each authorised stakeholder has benefits from a holistic view of the value chain, with enhanced energy transparency, traceability and system-wide security. Thousands of dollars are saved in terms of power purchases while the companies accelerate North America’s low-carbon energy transition. This kind of integrated ecosystem thinking is already enabling industry leaders to unlock 10 percent higher profitability, 3X return on investment and up to 20 percent higher sustainability performance, AVEVA data shows.
Problems turn into prospects within a connected ecosystem
Industrial enterprises will need to contend with growing operating complexity, from stricter sustainability targets to continued manpower shortages, supply chain interruptions, and rising prices. As the WEF’s 2024 theme indicated, trust has become more important than ever. By offering transparency, consistency and accountability, unified digital insights support collective and sustainable growth for every connected entity, and problems turn into prospects.
Connected industrial ecosystems will support sustainable economic growth over the next decade. They’re exactly what we need with the dawn of Industry 5.0, where robots and intelligent machines work alongside humans towards resilient, sustainable outcomes for society as a whole.