Thanks to Chris Ebeling (Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, Executive Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, ) and Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon) for their contributions When running a business division or even an entire company, there is constant friction between being customer focused and being process focused. It’s a constructive friction that often swings like a […]
Centralizing your functional resources
The decision of centralization vs decentralization of functional resources has been a regular evaluation by small and large businesses for decades. No company is fully centralized or decentralized, instead there are varying degrees of both. The amount of centralization that’s right for a company depends on its size, culture and strategy. If a company is […]
Moving to ERP Systems
Thanks to David Schaer (President, CU) for his contribution. The use of the term ‘ERP’ (Enterprise Resource Planning) can get some senior executives and business owners a little nervous. Some recall the implementation failures during ERP’s early days, or the lower than expected returns on the investment (ROI) for some of their peers. Whatever the […]
The importance of a digital strategy
Thanks to Eric Wise (CEO, Wise Telemetry) for his contribution. The concept or maybe the value of a digital strategy started becoming more evident over the last 10+ years as some digital capabilities (social media, mobile, e-commerce, IIOT) have scaled and gone mainstream.But developing a ‘sustainable’ digital strategy is hard work, harder than it has […]
Talent Management – The future of work
The topic ‘Future of Work’ has become a mainstream talking point over the last 5-7 years, principally driven by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on the workforce in the not too distant future. So, what should companies in the industrial gas space (and its ecosystem) be thinking about and planning […]
The Rise of Private Equity in the Industrial Gases industry
Over the last 5-10 years the presence of private equity in the industrial gas industry has dramatically increased. Not just at the mid-market level (with local and independent producers/distributors), but now they have made their presence known on the regional and global stage with companies like PAG Capital in China and CVC Capital globally with the Messer Group. Taking a closer look […]
Why the interest in Coal Gasification by Industrial gas companies?
The industrial gas industry provides products that are not typically known by the average consumer but, are critical to the manufacturing process of products they use everyday (i.e., computers, cell phones, packaged foods, gasoline, etc.). There was a famous tagline used by BASF twenty (20+) years ago that said, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy…we […]
Blockchain….why all the hype?
The topic of Blockchain is all over business and technology news but, if you ask an operational executive to explain why all the hype, chances are they will have a difficult time explaining its value. This response is not unusual because the technology is a bit complex, and it’s only proven use case is cryptocurrencies like […]
From RPA to “Intelligent Automation”
My last few articles have focused on the rise of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) from a disruptive solution focused on a small segment of the marketplace, to one that is now being piloted or used on a small/medium scale by many Fortune 1000 companies (see past articles). Per HfS Research, RPA market size is forecasted to […]
Why Are ~30% of RPA Implementations Failing?
Thanks to Kurt Cannon (SVP, LIQUID) for his contribution About a year ago, I recall chatting with a CIO of a >$0.5B concern and asking if he was familiar with the term “RPA.” To my surprise, he was not but, very quickly came up to speed due to its potential. That example is becoming very […]