The Role of a Technology Partner in Manufacturing
In any industry or vertical, a Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner offers advantages, provided you vet them properly to determine their area of specialization, services they offer, billing particulars, and related needs.
That said, finding the right MSP fit for a manufacturing company can require a little more digging.
Where the Relationship Begins
For Steve Martocchio, partner and Chief Operations Officer at Cooperative Systems, any good partnership—with a manufacturing client or otherwise—is based on learning.
“Every relationship we have is based on the amount of work we’re willing to do upfront to understand the individual business,” he says. “It’s not just about your technology infrastructure and protecting your assets, it’s about gaining a deep understanding of your business goals, processes, and procedures, and how your people interact with all of that. That immersive work is especially important in manufacturing, where there are complex relationships between legacy and newer technologies and a range of proprietary processes. Only after we’ve been able to assess all those issues in depth can we make any technology recommendations.”
“You also need to understand the complexity of a plant setting,” he adds. “It can be a very hostile environment for computing with large data storage requirements, including complex drawings and plans. That’s another part of what we consider in building solutions.”
Another more nuanced aspect of technology planning is the people.
“Everybody’s largest investment is their people,” asserts Roy vanNorstrand, Sales Manager at Coopsys. “Any manufacturing technology plan we develop needs to account for high-value, highly specialized people, including engineers, resource planners, and more on the plant floor. From our perspective as technology partners, part of our job is to help your people to do their jobs safer, better, and more productively.”
That initial collaborative exploration, says Martocchio, is about understanding how your systems and processes (and people)—at least from a technology standpoint—enable or slow your operations and what the infrastructure needs to account for in controlling, securing, and optimizing technology. It’s also about identifying, defining, and mitigating risk, along with determining what your acceptable level of risk is in the course of doing business.
It’s also about building that knowledge about risk into a plan that ensures as little downtime as possible, infrastructure resiliency, and data protection in the face of any disruption or breach.
Consistently Demonstrated Expertise
In many manufacturing environments, organizations are required to adhere to the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 program, a set of compliance guardrails developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) to safeguard the data and information that supports and enables our armed services. Its framework covers not just technology, but processes and procedures.
“Regardless of whether our clients are subject to CMMC, we make our recommendations and build our ongoing work around the program,” notes vanNorstrand. “CMMC is the ‘gold standard’ in manufacturing compliance and knowing its requirements makes us a sound industry partner. Part of our job is to stay up-to-date with CMMC changes, so we’re in a place where we need to consistently demonstrate that we understand manufacturing technology and processes and that we can effectively work in any business model.”
Living up to that level of compliance, he adds, allows Coopsys clients to differentiate themselves through their technology. It’s a competitive advantage when marketing their companies and when searching for and retaining talent.
It’s Not “Set It and Forget It”
Finally, in any good relationship, the support is ongoing.
“What drives much of what we do is in our ongoing relationship,” asserts Martocchio. “Any agreement we have in place goes beyond just creating a technology platform. Our goal is to ensure that it’s optimized ongoing.”
To that end, Coopsys conducts quarterly Strategic Business Reviews (SBRs). The SBRs include statistics related to system performance, but they’re more heavily focused on how well the technology is doing in terms of meeting business goals.
“The data matters,” he says, “but the SBRs are really about identifying our clients’ challenges and opportunities, and making shifts to meet those needs. At the end of the day, we view our partnership as one that will help them overcome those obstacles and obtain their goals. That’s what an MSP should do.”
Connect with us today to learn more about how Cooperative Systems can optimize your manufacturing firm’s technology and cybersecurity posture.