Microsoft Cloud Services For Manufacturing Companies

Manufacturers today face many challenges thanks to a turbulent world economy, explosive growth in technology, changing workforce, and unpredictable consumer purchasing behavior. To be agile and resilient, manufacturing organizations must move fast and embrace digital transformation with the cloud at its core. Cloud computing doesn’t only help manufacturers increase agility, but it also optimizes performance, reduce costs, and enhance performance to drive competitiveness and profitability. At MicroXpress Inc., our highly experienced cloud IT experts are ready to help you shift your organization into the new hybrid world and empower your workforce through tailored cloud solutions that meet the unique needs of your business.

What Is Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing?

Microsoft cloud for manufacturing is a comprehensive suite of cloud solutions unveiled at Ignite 2021 by Microsoft and designed to holistically accelerate digital transformation in manufacturing. Cloud helps the manufacturing industry by providing reliable and prompt solutions to typical challenges. Microsoft cloud solutions for manufacturers include Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and more.

Why Should Manufacturers Adopt Microsoft Cloud?

Microsoft cloud for manufacturers connects intelligent, integrated cloud and edge capabilities of Microsoft stack to your manufacturing environment. This helps your business increase asset and worker productivity in safe and secure manufacturing environments.

The following are some of the key benefits of Microsoft cloud in the manufacturing industry:

Create More Resilient Supply Chains

Microsoft cloud provides manufacturers of all sizes with ideal tools to manage their supply chain, finances, and operations. It also offers reliable support for customer relationships that enable manufacturers to gain complete control and visibility on all areas of their business. Cloud products such as Supply Chain Visibility, Always On Service, Learning And Knowledge Management, And Asset Productivity provide full capabilities to stay on top of all your operations. For example, the Supply Chain Visibility product can help you create a digital representation of the physical supply chain, so you predict impending disruptions and proactively take measures to overcome them.

Improved Security

As the world struggle with a strong wave of cyberattacks targeting all kinds of business, security is undeniably a critical factor in all cloud services. Microsoft data processing centers meet the compliance requirement of all essential standards of the industry. Microsoft also leverages “Data Models” that provide an option to limit cloud storage usage to the country where the user company is headquartered. This ensures all your sensitive company data stays in situ restricted to the local jurisdiction. In a nutshell, cloud security from Microsoft provides the following crucial guarantees:

• Security: Microsoft cloud protects all data from breaches and unauthorized access through certifications and technology that meets updated industry standards.
• Data protection: With Microsoft cloud, content and access is controlled by the customer alone. Ideally, you can access, retrieve or delete your data at any time
• Transparency: With Microsoft cloud, you always know what is happening with your content. Microsoft gives periodic reports on how the content is processed, managed, and secured.
• Compliance: Microsoft cloud ensures all customer data is stored and managed in compliance with applicable legislation and existing regulations.

Building More Agile Factories

The recent pandemic demonstrated the industry’s unpreparedness to operate remotely. At the peak of the pandemic, many manufacturers struggled to access their factories and workforce, leading to the halting of operations. Microsoft cloud for manufacturers ensures you can operate remotely anywhere, simulating everything and automating anywhere, thus accelerating your smart factory investments. Microsoft cloud solutions have helped connect billions of diverse assets and process vast amounts of real-time data, and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge. For example, some manufacturers who adopted the cloud are leveraging the internet of things (IoT) to boost factory output in their operations and provide better solutions to their clients.

Transforming Your Workforce

As competition heats up, closing the skill gap and reskilling your workforce is crucial to staying competitive. Manufacturers are now adopting technologies that help them attract, hire, onboard and retain the next generation of the workforce. Microsoft cloud provides products such as Microsoft Teams and RealWear to help your workforce return to the workplace confidently. These products help create virtual versions of your factory acceptance testing process and keep your business moving amid challenges such as the recent travel restrictions and social distancing requirements. Cloud-based manufacturing solutions extend the reach of your workforce by providing access to geographically remote sites making it possible to undertake remote operations through instant messaging and centralized cloud-based workflows. Manufacturers are also leveraging Microsoft Power Platform to help ensure your next-generation workforce is equipped with the new skills they need to succeed in the digital world.

Engage Customers in New Ways

With Microsoft cloud, you can establish stronger relationships with your customer base by leveraging Azure to provide better experiences across various channels, including sales, marketing, and service channels. Manufacturers using cloud technology are empowered to deliver proactive services through the use of AI-connected systems that provide a single view of their customers and devices. Microsoft has invested in a service suite of Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications that boost support delivery and optimize customer satisfaction. The product gives you intelligence to enable proactive service and accelerate customer service agents’ productivity.

Microsoft Cloud Support Solutions Provided by MicroXpress Inc

As the leading Microsoft partner in y, MicroXpress Inc is better positioned to unlock the power of the manufacturing industry cloud and customize it to your organization. Our experts will personalize your cloud to enhance agility, accelerate time to value and create effective solutions that address the changing and unpredictable consumer needs. The following are some of the Microsoft clouds for manufacturers that we support:

Azure

Modernizing to a smart factory with Azure helps you keep pace with your market trends and customer needs. The highly experienced Microsoft cloud team from MicroXpress Inc. can help you migrate your resources to the cloud, so you achieve agility, save costs and increase resilience. With Microsoft Azure services from our team, you are empowered to take a data-centric approach to meet the emerging issues that manufacturers face today. We will help you maximize your Azure environment, so you gain visibility across your operations, offer your customers personalized experiences, and establish innovative business models thanks to our secure and scalable cloud-based solutions. Our experts will work alongside your team to help you understand your options, identify, develop and deploy cloud solutions that guarantee better business outcomes.

Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 solutions help manufacturers combine CRM and ERP capabilities into a single easy to use management system. It is a cloud-based CRM and ERP solution that comes with a full suite of tools to streamline your business communication, so you meet the needs of your diverse teams in sales, marketing, and customer service. At MicroXpress Inc., we will help your organization fully take advantage of the benefits that Dynamic 365 offers to ensure your employees get practical tools to be more productive, improve your customer relationship and win more business.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 enterprise provides teams with reliable apps and experiences to connect, collaborate and get work done from any location. When you choose Microsoft 365 services from MicroXpress Inc., you can rest assured a team of skilled and experienced professionals will take care of the heavy lifting from identifying setup and migration to security and resilience. The Microsoft 365 solutions from MicroXpress Inc. are designed to maximize your investment and optimize the productivity of users and administrators by proving:

• Planning and effective executions of complex migrations and deployments
• Ongoing security monitoring and backup to keep your data safe
• 24/7 customer support covering all managed environments.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams encourages collaboration and better communications, thus empowering employees in the manufacturing industry to work anywhere and at any time. Unfortunately, Teams come with many features and capabilities that make it quite hard for companies to get what they need without expert help. MicroXpress Inc. provides managed Microsoft solutions for manufacturing industry design to help you get more from your unified communication platform. We will pair you with experts who will configure, fully manage and support your Microsoft Teams to ensure your workforce gets the exact collaboration and communication tools they need to succeed in the job. The following are some of the benefits that you gain by trusting us to manage your Microsoft Teams:

• Comprehensive teams care: We provide remotely capable, reliable IT support and employee training for Microsoft Teams.
• Affordable solutions: We charge a fixed price per user per month, so you get all support you need without breaking the bank.
• Best in class expertise: MicroXpress Inc. is a leading Microsoft partner; we have provided myriads of skills and capabilities tailored to support your specific needs in teams.

Get Professional Help Today

Undoubtedly, the manufacturing industry is undergoing myriads of transformation triggered by the pandemic, new technologies, globalization, and changing business environments. In a recent study, 90% of interviewed executives revealed that they must transform their digital transformation by adopting cloud computing for their organizations to remain agile and resilient.

At MicroXpress Inc., we understand every manufacturing business is on a digital journey. However, not all organizations have the skills and resources to implement and maximize their Microsoft cloud investments. This is why we are committed to providing highly reliable managed Microsoft cloud solutions that help you create more gains in terms of productivity, agility, sustainability, and speed to market. Contact us today to learn more.

Thanks to our friends at CEU Technologies in Chicago for their help with this article. Discover more about CEU and their Chicago-based IT services.