UK manufacturing catching up when it comes to mobile adoption

Fast adoption of mobile technologies by UK manufacturers is enabling the industry to remain competitive with other countries, according to unique findings from business solutions provider K3 Syspro.

K3 Syspro analysed data from downloads of its mobile Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) framework, SYSPRO Espresso, to identify a number of key trends, including downloads by platform, location, and age group. And despite being released only 12 months ago, almost a quarter (21%) of downloads of the solution globally have come from UK manufacturing businesses, with over 2,000 downloads of the application to date. What’s more, the majority of these downloads were made by workers in the 35-44 year age group, indicating that it’s not just young engineers who are embracing mobile in the UK.

Although the UK still lags slightly behind the US in terms of total downloads of SYSPRO Espresso, the results from K3 Syspro offer an encouraging outlook for the future of UK manufacturing. What’s more, the findings support recent research released in the annual PwC survey, which found a staggering 81% of industrial manufacturing CEOs see mobile technologies as being strategically important for their enterprises.

K3 Syspro Managing Director Cathie Hall commented on the adoption of mobile technologies within the manufacturing industry. She said: “It’s really encouraging to see manufacturers are now prioritising the importance of mobile technologies as a driving force in the future of manufacturing. Our own downloads of SYSPRO Espresso clearly demonstrate that UK manufacturers are ahead of the curve in terms of adopting new mobile technologies, and this is being reflected in overall performance levels.

“Manufacturing is constantly evolving, and therefore, so is the way that our customers work. Espresso affords customers transparency of critical business data from any place at any time, helping to streamline supply chains and improve efficiencies.”

SYSPRO Espresso is a mobile platform which allows users of SYSPRO ERP to access vital business data in any location at any time for device agnostic data collection and transaction processing. It is one of the first platforms of its kind to use a single source codebase to create native applications for any mobile device, with built-in powerful customisation capabilities for both the end-user and developers to engage.