As 2023 slowly fades away, we allow ourselves a little pause to reflect and think ahead. What does 2024 have in store for us at Coretecs? If 2023 is any indication: lots of projects, lots of eye-opening trends, and lots of fun. Our three managing partners - Adrien, Jurgen and Mathias - took the time and talked about what they think and dream the future holds. Read along!
We grew, that’s for sure. Our team went from six to thirteen loyal teammates! We emphasize the word ‘loyal’ as we didn’t lose anyone along the way. Something to congratulate ourselves on in these times of high turnover. We're so proud and glad that our approach seems to be appreciated within the team. They are all equally talented and amaze us daily with their maturity and skills. There is no doubt about it: this is the team we will confidently go into 2024 with!
Adrien Bousez: “The team spirit that we witness at Coretecs today is incredible, and something we want to guard and continue in 2024, no matter how much we grow.”
For 2024, we hope to expand up to 20 colleagues. If only because we’re ambitious towards clients and services. When demand continues to rise, our supply must follow, right? In our opinion, the sky is the limit. We hope to balance the scales within the team, so all subdivisions (E&I, OT (automation and connectivity) and IT (Data, AI and Applications)) have equal (wo)manpower.
Our goal is to be able to present our clients with a complete offering towards smart industries. That means having loads of in-house expertise, though. We’ll weigh up strategically when to set up new business units and when it’s better to work with partners within our industry ecosystem that we are building. From a logistical point of view, there is some work to be done. These days, as MPs, we still help out in a purely executional role. We want to slowly introduce more team members who’ll take over those responsibilities, so we can focus on our operations, employees and customers.
2023 was the year of ChatGPT. Sure, we notice the trend steadily carrying on in 2024 but also witness other interesting things cropping up, like Microsoft starting their own research into chips and graphics cards, for instance. In any case, companies will have to start reskilling and upskilling if they want to work with those.
Jurgen Petré: “Upskilling and reskilling will be big concepts in 2024. Organisations have interesting tools in their hands by now, but not the knowledge or skills yet to work with them properly. That's where Coretecs comes in.”
The movement of customers asking for AI solutions for their process problems will continue too, in our opinion. As we see companies like Yokogawa starting to enable autonomous control of chemical manufacturing plants by using AI algorithms, we’re sure other initiatives and applications will follow in the industry. As a team, we’d like to be able to answer those questions, and assess the feasibility of it for our clients. It’s all about momentum.
We’re starting the difficult exercise of asking our clients to tell us what their problems are. For now, it’s still the other way around; they expect us to show them what we can do, what we can conjure up for them. Ultimately, they just want to know which solutions are worth the investment but that’s why we’d rather check things out at their end first. To know more concretely, with their data, what solutions are viable and add value to their specific situation rather than trying to inspire them with buzzwords and topics that don’t necessarily do that. When we consider the ESG Efforts of 2030 that are slowly approaching, though, we’re sure most companies are recognizing that they have to adapt soon and will find us for support.
The smart industry journey has statistically proven its competitive edge by now. Organisations that jumped on it from the start have obtained a clear advantage in their productions. It created a shockwave for those who didn't and now realise they’re behind. Especially in the process industry. We have a strong feeling those companies will be switching things up in 2024. They simply have to, or they’ll fall too far behind.
Now, they’ve all been gathering data for years, not really being able to do something with it now as it’s stuck within legacy tools that aren’t ready for the connectivity requirements of today’s use cases. 2024 will be the time to start doing smart things with it. Making autonomous manufacturing sites, for instance. It’s a strong move that would make you an instant leader in your field.
Mathias Knop: “I wish companies that are not yet convinced of the added value of Industry 4.0 the best of luck. We’re here to service those who are, and who’ve got a strategy in place but don’t know how to implement it (yet).”
Another bold statement from our part. Obviously, we remain game to help you assess your situation first, based on frameworks, your KPIs, your costs and such. A lot of consultancy firms build on strategies but lack the expertise for execution. With our background in strategy and experience in execution, we can make a real difference here. That’s the part we want to focus on: understanding your strategy and implementing it, showing you how to go from theory to actual results.
Something that truly opened our eyes in 2023 was UNS (Unified Namespace). It’s all about centralisation of data in factories and making data models more unified. For us, that has become the basis of all things. On top of that UNS, we’ll be building apps to work out software-defined productions. That’s basically what that other buzzword, ‘Digital Twins’, means: making data accessible and using it to communicate and to set up systems intelligently to achieve goals. If you combine UNS with better deployment of connectivity solutions (vertical integration) to make data more insightful, everything becomes usable by all systems in the network. And this in a structured way.
Jurgen Petré: “If we manage to achieve our workforce ambitions in 2024, we will really have earned a party!”
All dreams aside, we realize our big ambitions require equally big efforts. So firstly, we are expanding our workforce. We hope to reach our target of 7 new colleagues by 2024. As our kind of profiles are hard to find, it won’t be an easy feat.
Financially, we also have an objective in mind, and if/when that happens, our revenues will enable us to invest in the coming years. We will continue to serve our current clients - actually, we prefer to call them our partners - and we would like to add a few new ones too.
Finally, we are aiming high when it comes to our community and brand awareness. Our new website will be arriving soon, our first campaign on AI For Industry is coming ... All good and exciting things. Consider us ready and eager for 2024!
Reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the next got us excited! You too? Triggered to maybe get in touch and join our team as well? Let us know – we're keen to meet and have a chat. Who knows, maybe we’ll be each other’s New Year’s resolution!
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