Original article published here by Eckard Meyer.
In a piece for African Petrochemicals & Energy, written with our partner Nintex, Eckard Meyer argues that industrial organisations rarely need to rip out and replace their technology. Plants in petrochemicals, energy, mining, transport and manufacturing already run on ERP, databases, Microsoft services and specialist operational systems. The better move is to improve how work flows between people and those systems, and keep the controls the operation relies on.
The argument in brief
- Start with one process. Choose a process where manual effort, approval delays, poor visibility or governance demands cause a clear business problem. Then pick on-premises, cloud or hybrid to suit that workload.
- Connect, don't replace. A workflow layer can capture work where it happens, govern the approvals, and pass approved information into the systems of record.
- Migrate with restraint. Legacy migration is not about copying everything that exists. Understand the estate, its dependencies and what is business-critical first. Rebuild or consolidate where that is justified, and leave the rest until there is a real reason to change it.
- Measure before promising. Nobody should promise ROI before measuring the current process. Agree a baseline first, such as approval time, rework or auditability, and judge the change against it.
The article backs this up with anonymised First Digital project work on Nintex Automation K2. One is an upgrade path at a vehicle battery manufacturer. Another moved paper-based compliance in transport into an auditable digital process integrated with SAP. A third is a phased migration of legacy e-forms at a mining operation.
It ends with a question for industrial leaders: which process is costing you the most time, control or visibility, without being reason enough to replace your core systems? In the article's own words, "Start with the process. Protect what already works. Modernise at the right pace."
