Pumps & Systems staff spoke with Grundfos President Jonathan Hamp-Adams about the state of the industry entering 2019.
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What are the biggest roadblocks to IIoT adoption?
Adopting IIOT and the connectivity is not the issue. The challenge remains making sense of all the data and determining the best way to commercialize it. There are many questions still open regarding what the “new business” model will be. This is something we see many/most global companies grappling with. Another issue would be the speed at which we can enhance our customer experience.
What are the biggest benefits to organizations that are embracing IIoT technologies?
Right now, we are excited about opportunities being created in predictive maintenance and system performance, the latter relating to not only legal compliance but also social responsibility in managing resource consumption. We also see great strides in Knowledge Management and particularly Tacit Knowledge. IIOT is not a question of if, but how.
What are the top jobs you need to fill?
We are currently focusing on positions that enhance our customer contact and purchasing experience, along with roles in our service offering. Our open positions are always posted at https://us.grundfos.com/about-us/career.html.
What is your company (or the ones you serve) doing to address the skills gap?
Not a day goes by without some form of training, whether it’s face to face, lunch and learn or online webinar. There is no doubt that technology is will play an increasing role in the development and management of our Knowledge Management strategy.
How have the new European GDPR rules impacted your company’s marketing efforts? Has it affected your customers?
Understanding how we process personal data is important for how we work at Grundfos today and in the future. We must honor the trust given to us in order to provide better data quality solutions. The rules are strict and can result in high fines, but losing our customers’ trust would be worse. Since Grundfos operates on EU-based IT systems and stores non-EU data within the EU, GDPR applies even here in the U.S. We must follow the rules relating to employee data and third-party data. To date, it has not affected our customers, but it has certainly affected our considerations when planning marketing programs
What keeps you up at night?
Thinking about the technologies and processes that we can be use in our business to improve the customer experience every time they interact with us.
What are you most optimistic about in 2019? We have streamlined many of our customer interface processes and added some new technologies that will make doing business with Grundfos easier and working at Grundfos better. I’m looking forward to us being an even better-operating unit than we were in 2018.
Anything else we should know about that you want to add?
We are very excited to be moving our new regional headquarters to Houston in 2019. Additionally, opened a new facility in Olathe late in 2018, and it is outrageously customer centric – I can’t wait to see what innovations the team there is going to come up with in the future.