Kerry Grimes, Head of Global Partners, AVEVA, offers his expert insight on incoming digital transformation trends

Kerry, what trends will influence industrial technology channels this year?

Mobility will be a big theme in 2023. Post-pandemic, we are finding that companies are definitely working differently, and allowing employees to stay home. It’s going to be possible to run plants with fewer people onsite.

Site managers and workers will be able to progressively remotely monitor what’s happening, and even have access to offsite advanced HMI (human machine interface) to control plant operations.

As a case in point, AVEVA’s Edge applications now work from nearly any device. With web publishing and runtimes for Windows and Linux, it’s possible to monitor and control richly-illustrated SCADA or HMI applications from smartphones, tablets, panel PCs and more.

In another salient trend, tough economic conditions such as regional political instabilities, inflationary spikes and FX fluctuations will continue to pose challenges for plant owners and channel partners. But, in these straitened times, organizations are set to turn to ultra-efficient processes and technology to ensure operations are optimized for cost, agility and sustainability.

In the coming years, forward-looking plants will look to invest in end-to-end flexible digital operations, and deliver value, innovation and cost-savings in a fluctuating and competitive market.

In the same vein, companies will look to purchase cost-effective software bundle subscriptions or software-as-a-service (SaaS) packages to ensure access to the latest technology as it happens, and within budget.

What will be the greatest opportunity areas for industrial technology channel partners in 2023?

Today’s economic conditions mean that successful supply chains will be powered by agile, efficient and sustainable operations. This trend opens up a growing market for subscription models which promote organizational resilience, while also enabling channel partners to transist to recurring revenue models.

This new and evolving sales model will require increased customer intimacy in the form of continuous Customer Success Management (CSM), meaning industrial channel partners will need to improve their engagement capabilities and selling motions.

The new sales model will disrupt cash flows and require investment in the short term. However, in the long term, partners and customer will see increased sustained revenue growth and increased valuation of the partner business.

Why is demand for industrial technology subscription growing at such a fast pace?

Via subscription models, such as AVEVA Flex, customers can acquire and scale over a whole range of emerging technology solutions as their business evolves over time.

This means customers can reduce their upfront investment in industrial technologies, decrease the time-to-value of deployments, and increase the total return over time by reacting more quickly to market opportunities.

Flexibility in spending and reallocation of investment is then constantly aligned to changes in a customers’ business and production environment.

What will set winning channel partners apart in 2023?

Successful partners will lead with ability to successfully match customers and commercial offers with their organizational vision.

Winning channel partners will understand that a clients’ needs will be constantly evolving over time – now and in the future. In today’s fluctuating and competitive landscape, the most successful partners will grow with their customers, anticipating and meeting their needs in a world of constantly changing innovation.

The new economy requires a fundamentally different approach to the sales cycle, and positions the partner as a collaborative member of a team that can address immediate challenges and help customers get the most from their technology deployments.