Bridgman's B&L Information Systems continues to lead the way for the metalcasting industry around the world, especially in getting foundries to adopt cutting edge technology that takes their information to the Cloud. In fact, B&L's CEO, Philip Laney, holds the cover story position on that technology in a major industry publication being shared world wide.
Laney has authored a cover-story article for Foundry Management & Technology magazine's June issue. While the piece addresses the advantages of utilizing the Cloud for data storage & retrieval, it actually has much broader business applications for the technology's impact on small to medium-sized businesses in most any field of endeavor or industry sector.
Philip Laney (CEO of Bridgman, Michigan-based B&L Information Systems) was recently featured in an industry publication, Foundry Management & Technology. The article he authored actually took the June cover.
In the article, Laney notes that small to medium-sized businesses make up nearly all of the metalcasting market, and essentially that can be said of most business sectors. Most are also privately held, as can be extrapolated to a broad range of businesses, and ownership frequently spans multiple generations with business focused on niche markets.
Almost any reader can translate the value of the Cloud to their individual business by replacing the reference by Laney to metalcasters to their own product line or business endeavor. Laney notes that the Cloud is a significant development for the customers he serves, but one can easily transfer that significance to their own business, making the article valuable beyond the metalcasting industry. Laney describes essentially what the cloud means, citing the National Institute of Standards & Technology as defining "a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." Laney boils it down to the more simplistic, "access of information systems through an Internet connection."
He goes on to explain why the Cloud is such an important development for his colleagues by delivering the benefits and power of integrated business systems that historically only the largest organizations could afford to avail themselves of. He shares the cost effectiveness of the benefits that accrue to use of the Cloud, but also explains why the advantages extend far beyond the cost factor.
He describes the "feature-rich, robust, integrated application software" available at a fraction of the cost of even just a few years ago. Those are all features that accrue across the industrial landscape, not just for metalcasters. The results he cites include significant improvement in customer service, on-time delivery, product quality, inventory reductions, cash flow, and numerous other business system improvements.
Best of all, is the Cloud can be accessed and utilized by an Internet connection and web browser to access the system which can be done anytime, anywhere, from any device.
Laney further delineates the broad array of business systems deployed in the Cloud from customer relationship management, to supply chain management, from human resource capital to enterprise resource planning. Laney has performed a fair measure of research into a multitude of aspects of Cloud-based business issues and shares chunks of, and links to, that research.
The excellent, well-written piece by Laney concludes with a comprehensive checklist of points to be addressed by any firm electing to become engaged in the Cloud as a sort of self-assessment prior to making the leap. In the end, he points out that with the increasing number of firms headed to the Cloud, more and more are finding the benefits of arriving there far outstrip the risks involved in cutting-edge technology.
Laney's Bridgman-based B&L Information Systems is a global leader in providing integrated enterprise resource planning software for the metalcasting industry. Since 1976, the company has used their deep understanding of the specific challenges and problems of foundries and die casters to create solutions which match the way such companies operate, making their proprietary software easier to learn and use.
Laney has overseen significant technology innovations which continue his firm's commitment to supporting the modern metalcasting industry. Congratulations not only on the exponential growth of the company headquartered on Rambo Road in Bridgman, but also the national recognition garnered from a cover-story piece critical to the entire industry that B&L serves. It just further cements the company's leadership position in a major industry sector keeping the art of manufacturing alive and well across the state, the region, the nation, and the world.
