Why Enterprise Data Matters To Millennials

How does your company position itself? That’s what the millennial workforce, a new wave of successors for corporate and industrial America, wants to know. In fact, they want to know a lot of things that you might be surprised about; including your enterprise data.

In a recent panel discussion, three millennial age college students discussed that very question with executive attendees at the 11th Annual Manufacturing Leadership Summit. In their address, the students were in unison on the idea of aligning the business model with the progressive ideas around greater transparency and enhanced communication of the next-gen workforce.

Millennials are the generation of shared thoughts, attributes, and ideas. They use shared services, rent clothes, and are attracted to farm to table consumables. They are the generation of the open source movement, and the generation that helped launch Uber and AirBnB; shared property services. So how will these new thoughts and ideas affect future enterprise data and technology?

The shared enterprise

Millennials expect wide-spread transparency among departments. They will need an opportunity to cross-functionalize their own role with that of another. And this group, currently ages 18 to 34, will place big interest on their desire for all-things-on-demand, and a non-negotiable need for every bit of information available to them in real time.

Astonishingly, manufacturing and distribution firms, with their dynamic and complex digital ecosystems, have become the Rembrandt of millennial job attractiveness as of late. What was once thought of as an undesirable job among top job-seekers, manufacturing is noticing a surge of applicants from later generations. They ‘re interested in the ability to experience a variety of roles, primarily stoked by the fear of being stuck in one function or job too long and being seen as unable to contribute by managers.

In recent years, a number of manufacturers have largely adopted a fully digital enterprise management ecosystem to meet shifting regulations and ultimately drive business and revenue growth. The resulting downsize has fostered the need for tech-savvy, sophisticated millennials. More companies are seeing revenues powered by technology, and it’s ability to create collaboration and highly streamlined communication. Additionally, incumbents’ roles have begun to cross-functionalize with other areas of the business to decrease separation costs and improve consistency of work flows.

A Millennial-driven Model  (transparency, communication, control)

Adopting a model that suits the millennials embodies the idea of a fully connected enterprise. The connected enterprise positions manufacturers as being more proactive in a changing market driven by social interaction.  Adopting an enterprise that shares data across silo’s and allows for greater social collaboration and communication regarding things like customers, accounts, shipping, jobs, and more can have a dramatic impact on the business. It can provide improve business processes, eliminate repetitive tasks, and improve the overall way that the systems operates. Not to mention, this kind of enterprise data transparency is exactly what millennials will expect when interacting with technology.

Without a fully connected enterprise software system and fully-connected enterprise data , this ever-curious workforce will become frustrated with the lack of transparency and ability to dive in to “what’s really going on”. The millennials believe in sharing ideas and understanding the why behind processes. A connected database of information allows different departments to visually see the process from a 360 degree view. This kind of visibility is extremely attractive for Millennials. One of their top values in the job market today is the feeling of doing meaningful work. This means understanding why a process works the way it does, and what the outcome might be.

This approach has far-reaching benefits to the organization. Businesses with fully-integrated enterprises, and employees who have a vested interest in transparency and collaboration, will ultimately help streamline and improve business processes that may be costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars today. Having department leaders who want to understand their role in a process creates an advocate for improvement inside every organizational silo. Businesses that continue to make processes efficient will be able to respond faster to customers, improve logistics, and deliver on business outcomes faster than ever before.

As the industrial sector continues their path of steady growth, we can expect to see an increased demand for this skilled workforce and visa versa. However, if industrialized firms fail to integrate ERP, CRM, and many other digital machines together Millennials may become frustrated with the walls of enterprise data that have been seemingly built up.

Why you should start connecting your enterprise data today

• Collaborative business processes ensure that important pieces of the puzzle are brought into new project scope
• Streamlined business processes create a more agile business
• Innovation drives millennials to apply
• Roles and responsibilities become simpler and easier to understand
• The company drives a fully transparent and compliant business model

Wrap up

Ultimately, today’s hottest job for Gen Y and Gen X is in the industrialized sector. We will continue to see verticals become decentralized, extending the breadth of entry level positions. The organizations that embrace the generation’s ideas of social collaboration and transparency will those best positioned for success. However, If industrialists fail to adopt the connected enterprise, and collaborative culture, they risk losing out on much more than the millennial workforce. They will have failed to enact technological solutions that could be dramatically improving their business and enterprise data processes; which have a very measurable impact on revenue and growth. Ultimately, the businesses best positioned to succeed in the next 10 years will be those who have adopted many of the systems that millennials desire most.