If you associated ‘Big Brother’ with the popular reality televisions show, sorry to disappoint you. This context is rather different, and refers to an interesting perception of GE that I experienced at an industry conference where I recently had an opportunity to present. This Conference on ‘Digital Manufacturing’ was organized by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the leading industry forum in India. It focused on the application of digital technologies in manufacturing organizations. I was very excited to represent GE Intelligent Platforms (GE IP), and present our story on ‘Operational Excellence – The Digital Way’.My presentation focused primarily on the different milestones in this journey, pitfalls to watch out for, associated short and long-term benefits, and of course how GE could help manufacturing companies! Incidentally the presenter immediately before me also presented about one major milestone on this journey. He represented a start-up, and focused on solving an immediate, smaller problem that resonated well with some mid-sized organizations. The striking similarity of the solution (or at least a part of it) was well contrasted by the huge difference in the size of the organizations presenting it, and the different approaches to solving the same challenge. That led the Session Chairman to comment about our presentations as ‘big brother and small brother recommending essentially the same solution’.
The presentation similarity aside, it does compel one to think hard about competing with smaller organizations operating in niche categories with extremely low price points – a critical vendor selection criterion in markets such as India. During the course of my first ECLP assignment on commercial activation for our software business, I often meet prospects who are apprehensive of dealing with multinational companies such as GE, because their perception of GE is that of a high-end player with naturally high pricing. Although they do appreciate our solutions, quite often they do not need the entire suite. Thankfully GE IP’s solutions are sufficiently modular and scalable to suit their expectations, but the perception lingers.
The conference also surprised me with the progressive attitude of its delegates to consider new technologies. In an industry that has still not fully embraced automation, the audience was all ears when a presenter from their own (end-user) industry spoke about cloud computing and managed services as viable models to address capital investments in automation. And they were even more excited at the prospect of ‘visualizing’ their factories from remote locations on tablets and smart phones. In true ‘Big Brother’ style, they would like complete visibility over their operations in any area, anytime, from any location.
While that wish might take some time to materialize (although the applications are already available, including those from GE IP), I was happy that I could find some good leads that I could follow up with after the conference. And the experience of presenting at an industry conference is definitely memorable – I have it etched below ‘digitally’!
I am sure you too have held some perceptions of a company as large, as diversified, and as complex as GE. Please feel free to share your perceptions in the comments section.
PS: If you are interested in a copy of the presentation, it is available here.
This blog first appeared on GE ECLP's Official Blog at www.eclpblog.com
