Innovation can be a tough task for smaller businesses looking to get a competitive advantage. In the US small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are generally companies with less than 500 employees, but based on the industry, ownership structure, and revenue, that number can be as high as 1,500 employees. PricewaterhouseCoopers says “63% of CFOs [in SMEs] see innovation as a critical factor during the [Covid-19] recovery period” in this Sifted article. How these SMEs can win in the current economic environment is with partnership, collaboration, and investment. “Invest in technology that improves your business operations and make your company more competitive. Information and communications technology are particularly worthwhile” says The Balance Small Business.
Small manufacturers are beginning to see the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. With the anticipated growth that companies are seeing, especially in the manufacturing sector, SMEs are beginning to invest more in relationships with other companies that in the leading edge of innovation and technologies. According to the Small Manufacturing Report from Business Wire, “44% identified the rising costs of materials as their number one concern”. The report is by Xometry, who takes a quarterly pulse of small to mid-sized manufacturers representing more than 190,000 companies in an over $260 billion market. With the rising costs of materials, SMEs are shifting their focus on being more efficient in their supply chain and material management strategies.
StrataFlows is helping companies, big and small, innovate by utilizing data that they already have and improving cross-company communications. StrataFlows is the cloud-based platform to proactively plan for and keep up with changes in material movement and supply chain. Our platform is an incident command center allowing users to have end-to-end real-time visibility when a part goes missing or a supplier is late during changes in supply. We help clients stay resilient in these times by keeping production flowing by tracking suppliers, demand, and issues, and give them the tools they need to take action. The Issue Tracker module, along with its built-in reporting and dashboarding capabilities, helps our clients keep their continuous improvement goals by giving visibility and collaboration tools to stay agile in a changing market. Click here to for a free trial of StrataFlows.
