As the saying goes, you can tell a lot about somebody by the company they keep. In October, CIO Review magazine named Spruik Technologies one of its “10 Most Promising Manufacturing Technology Consulting/Implementation Service Companies” for 2018.

This designation is tremendous validation for a startup like ours — one that is well positioned to help North American manufacturers transform Industry 4.0 from a necessary evil to a promising vehicle for long-term competitive differentiation.

CIO Review is read widely by manufacturing technology decision-makers throughout the United States.The Top 10 list finalists were chosen by a panel of prominent CEOs, CIOs, venture capitalists and analysts, along with the CIO Review editorial team.

The magazine’s profile of Spruik Technologies cites the prior success achieved overseas by company founder Geoff Nunan, who assembled a small and specialized team of tech experts to help Australian manufacturers overcome intense regulatory pressures and global competition 20 years ago.

Geoff’s nimble, vendor-agnostic consulting and implementation approach equipped his clients to establish synergy between IT and operations while improving innovation, throughput and cost efficiency through the smart adoption of technology. Those Aussie manufacturers that optimized how they collected, analyzed and acted upon data thrived. The ones that simply reduced overhead and hoped for the best eventually went away.

Now the North American manufacturing sector faces similar challenges — and we’re here to collaborate with the most forward-looking among them, just like we did Down Under. Spruik is exactly the alternative this market needs to the big consultancies that are slow, risk-averse and bound to just one software provider. All of this greatly limits the value they can offer to manufacturing companies facing challenging market conditions.

Since the Spruik consulting and implementation approach is so new to the U.S. market, the earliest adopters stand to benefit the most, simply because most of their competitors will remain tethered to the big consulting firms and limited in terms of their digital transformation.

Success Story: Crider Foods

One of the earliest adopters to Spruik’s nimble consulting approach is Crider Foods, a global provider of shelf-stable meat products based in Stillmore, Georgia.

After hearing Geoff speak at an industry conference, a Crider Foods executive immediately reached out to Spruik to lead an assessment of the Crider Foods IT and OT infrastructure. The assessment revealed that while Crider Foods was highly efficient in many ways, the company was not taking full advantage of its data and was insufficiently prepared to capitalize on Industry 4.0.

Spruik and Crider Foods are currently finalizing foundational fixes to the company’s ERP platform, prior to transitioning to an ops technology implementation phase scheduled for the first part of 2019. When complete, Crider Foods will operate from a single, centralized manufacturing execution system that allows enterprise-wide data to be collected and analyzed in real-time, fueling fast and highly strategic decisions.

Watch for a full case study on the Crider Foods project to come out soon. In the meantime, if you’re ready to accelerate your speed, efficiency and competitive differentiation, let’s get Spruiking! We’re excited to hear from you.