Smart Enterprise: Aspects of Smart Asset Management and Customer Services

This essay discusses the aspects of smart enterprises, including smart asset management and customer services. It provides case studies from Hera, Atos, IBM, Amazon, and Lexus. The essay concludes that automation has increased productivity and improved customer services in the industrial sector.

Running head: SMART ENTERPRISE
SMART ENTERPRISE
Name of student:
Name of university
Author’s note:

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Introduction
The aim of this essay is to discuss the aspects of smart enterprises. A detailed
information a smart enterprise is stated in this essay. A detailed discussion about two
different aspects of a smart enterprise with the help of two different case studies is provided
in this essay. Lastly, this essay concludes with an appropriate conclusion of this essay.
The impact of IoT can be understood with the progress of the several industries. The
companies gain a significant growth after implementing automation in their business. The
industrial sector gained the most from this technological development (Zhan et al. 2014).
Smart enterprises have been introduced in the industrial sector leading to significant rise in
the production and gaining profits. Some of the aspects of smart enterprises are smart
manufacturing, smart logistics, smart asset management, smart customer services, and health
monitoring of patients in real time (Neirotti et al. 2014).
Discussion
Smart enterprises
The fundamental change in the business goals among several companies are changing
with the introduction of digitisation. An enterprise is considered to be successful if it is able
to successfully implemented automation in their business. Some of the features of a smart
enterprise can be the maintaining the right balance between development, customer
centricity, and functioning excellence (Shigeno et al. 2015). The ecosystem of the future is
considered to be the implementation of 3D printers that will make the spare parts of several
warehouses obsolete. The opportunity of efficient and effective services of repair with the
help of augmented reality. It is considered that the digitisation is assisting several companies
into smart enterprises with the help of several distinguishing features.

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Aspect of smart asset management
Hera and Atos
The multi-utility company, Hera is a leading organisation for the services of environmental,
energy, and water. The progress of the company is based on the unyieldingly advanced
approach towards smart asset management that is implemented to increase the profits of the
organisation (Maklakov and Radionov 2014). With the increase in demand of constant water
supply, it became necessary to properly manage the asset. The biggest change that was
required for the asset management and moreover the management of assets and water
infrastructure was the change of information and communication. The dramatic advances
towards the towards the technology of communication and information are the key attributes
towards the approach of smart asset management. The company Atos assisted in the
development of proper systems to manage the assets of the Hera company. The change
demanded the in-depth knowledge of information engineering and systems (Ghosh, Patil and
Vuppala 2013). The three areas of business that needed to be developed in the Hera business
were:
Silo busting- The company needed to introduce better transparency among the departments.
The aim of this transparency was the generate crucial actionable intelligence that is desired
for smart asset management.
Real-time: The company needed to have the knowledge of the status of several events,
resources and the infrastructure components at the same time.
Geo-location: The need of this innovation was to equip the employees with the ability of
resolving as incident quickly and efficiently.
The benefits of introducing smart asset management in the company can be understood by the
following advantages:

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 Improvement in continuity and quality of services
 Decreased risk of accident
 Increased safety levels for the equipment and staffs
 Improved asset protection among the distributed network
 Decreased cost of maintenance
 Improvement in the knowledge of grid
IBM
The company IBM is a global leading company of IT infrastructure and solutions. This is an
American company with headquarters in Armonk, New York (Li, Li and Zhiqiang 2014). The
company manufactures and conducts business in the computer hardware, middleware and
software, and it also provides consulting services and hosting in the areas ranging from
nanotechnology to mainframe computers. The need of asset management in this company has
risen due to the demand of efficient and quick supply of goods (Qian, Zhong and Du 2017).
Some of the needs of asset management are:
 Unplanned shortage of an asset
 Risk on other assets
 Effect of the services due to asset outage
 Effect on customers
 SLA
 Perceptions of customer and market
 Impact on revenue
The company finally understood the need to implement smart asset management in the
business model of the company. The solution that was implemented in the company for
enterprise asset management includes the following aspects:

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Service monitoring, asset, and device: This includes the visualisation of the availability of
infrastructure and the performance through several devices, usage of data, that provide real-
time analysis and control for increasing time towards resolution (Molina et al. 2014).
Better informed decision making: With proper utilisation of information and data that is
aggregated from the operation systems and the business, the analysis of events, development
of insights, correlation between the reaction of change and the flexibility and performance of
the business is improved.
Lifecycle management of asset: The tracking, documenting, and making decisions about the
purchasing, implementation, maintenance, operation, and disposal of generation plant,
distribution or transmission of field assets is improved.
Enhanced customer experience: More control and usage on the energy sources of the
customers was provided with the help of convenient delivery and personalised experience to
the customers.
Automation of business processes: Proper management of business models, and the
optimisation of business processes yielding in increased in marketing time, satisfaction of the
customers and higher productivity.
Aspect of smart customer services
Amazon
The concept of Tiered service is not a new concept. The new venture of amazon, which is
Amazon prime, is a program that is made of service for member only, struck a major balance
between attainability and exclusivity that makes the customer democratic (Komninos, Pallot
and Schaffers 2013). The services of Amazon prime are affordable and it provides the
customer with opportunities of great services. These services includes free shipping within

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two-days, easy access to early sales, streaming of music that is ad-free, and several other
features. The feature of Amazon, Amazon prime is making its progress towards the
implementation of Prime Day, which is a sales event that is exclusive to the prime customers.
The effort to pull off this venture is huge but the company is prepared to invest in this idea to
provide services to the customers efficiently and effectively. The company also developed its
shipping strategies. The major advantage that the company provides to its customers is the
aspect of reliability of the items during shipping. Amazon was amongst the first companies
who implemented the extensive utilisation of tracking, both externally and internally. When a
customer purchases an item from the website, they are provided with a unique tracking
number of their item. The customer can track the delivery status of the items easily and be
aware of any delays or the delivery time. If a problem arises in the delivery of the items of the
customers, Amazon informs the customer before they could reach the customer services to
lodge a complaint. The product of Amazon, which is Kindle, also provides reliable customer
service (Chelliah 2014). The company utilises the implementation of automation in their
company to its highest level. The human workforce that is in the possession of Amazon is
huge but the production of services and goods have increased in the last decade with the
implementation of automation.
Lexus
The company recently implemented the use of automation to track the location of the vehicle
of a customer in real-time. It helps in getting information about any accident that the
customer has faced, to get information if the vehicle has been stolen, or any unexpected event
occurs (Rusu 2013). The technology has the ability to send help directly to the location of the
car. Some of the major features of this technology are:

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Locator for stolen vehicle: If any user has filed a police report, the response centre of Safety
connect has the ability to work with the police for helping in tracking and recovering the
stolen vehicle using the cellular and GPS technology of the application. It will help in
recovering the vehicle more easily and quickly, before the vehicle suffers any major damage.
SOS (Emergency assistance button): In the case of any health emergency or any kind of
vehicle related help that is required in real time, the vehicle has the facility of SOS button that
will send help to the location of the vehicle (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh 2014).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that the process of automation in the enterprises has
effected in increased productivity and better customer services. The industrial sector gained
the most from this technological development. Smart enterprises have been introduced in the
industrial sector leading to significant rise in the production and gaining profits. The multi-
utility company, Hera is a leading organisation for the services of environmental, energy, and
water. The progress of the company is based on the unyieldingly advanced approach towards
smart asset management that is implemented to increase the profits of the organisation. The
company manufactures and conducts business in the computer hardware, middleware and
software, and it also provides consulting services and hosting in the areas ranging from
nanotechnology to mainframe computers. The concept of Tiered service is not a new concept.
The new venture of amazon, which is Amazon prime, is a program that is made of service for
member only, struck a major balance between attainability and exclusivity that makes the
customer democratic. The Lexus company recently implemented the use of automation to
track the location of the vehicle of a customer in real-time.

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