Tech – the new knowledge worker

Axeda, Deloitte and the future of business

I had a great call the other day with Doug Standley of Deloitte and Brian Anderson of Axeda. The two firms have worked out an alliance but it’s the nature of the solution they are taking to market that’s so intriguing.

This may come as a surprise to all of the ERP and bean counter types out there but systems should and could be about more than accounting events. Yes, there is more to a business than a bunch of debits and credits.

To start with, businesses possess a lot of assets and serve a lot of constituents. Many of the assets would be even better used if someone or something communicated with them. Imagine what would happen if a manufacturer’s machines ‘communicated’? What if they relayed real-time events to other systems and key personnel?

Axeda is in the business of turning assets into intelligent assets. Deloitte is taking the knowledge captured via these assets and creating the actionable systems, dashboards, events, etc. that deliver value to businesses. Together, these two companies will help clients do remote diagnostics, configure devices, optimize business processes, etc.

I’ve written before how event-driven technologies (like the Progress Software’s Apama product) can radically re-define business. In my conversation with these two executives we discussed how intelligent asset systems can be used to detect ‘unplanned’ events as well as ‘planned’ and ‘related’ events. In this capacity, technology becomes a knowledge worker – an all new, virtual knowledge worker that never sleeps, requires no vacations, etc.

If your firm is looking for ways to do something new, competitively differentiating and potentially very strategic, then you might want to open up to the possibility of new ways of management, new management and control systems and a new operating system for your operations. Yes, it’s different and it could make your firm a fortune.