Jan 23, 2025

Digitalizing work with remote technologies

TeamViewer CPTO Mei Dent discusses how today’s digital technologies are transforming companies across manufacturing and industry.

Manage systems and machines

Insights overview

Today, digitalization is well underway. We all know the reasons for implementing it: It saves time, boosts efficiency and productivity, and makes good economic sense.

According to a recent Gartner report, 91% of businesses are engaged in some form of digital initiative, and 87% of senior business leaders say digitalization is a priority.

And it’s a constantly growing business. According to the World Economic Forum, digital transformation could reach USD $100 trillion in societal and industrial value by 2025.

The change is slowly unfolding

Despite the clear value of digitalization, however, we’re seeing fairly traditional setups across manufacturing, industrial, and OT service environments. This often takes the form of a monolithic automation pyramid, with production at the base, then operations management, and finally planning and logistics at its peak

In this setup, the distinct parts of the process have little communication with each other. As a result, we’re not taking advantage of the main opportunity of today’s digital technologies; namely, to digitalize and optimize structures and work processes, creating a world that works better.

Nonetheless, we are seeing a shift taking shape in networked, automated, and digital production. Gradually, the monolithic pyramid is being replaced by flexible applications, processes, and microservices capable of responding to unique needs.

More and more companies are now jumping right in and embracing digitalization. Among other things, they are using cloud computing, integrating IT within OT systems, and applying the latest digital technologies to drive connection and push their companies forward.

The role of remote software in digital transformation

Here at TeamViewer, we support our customers to drive digital transformation and sustainability, navigate the skills gap, and power hybrid and remote work.

But how are we doing this? Across use cases, the unique power of our technology lies in its ability to connect.

With it, the real world is translated into data that can be used elsewhere. This data can then be plugged into other sets, contributing to a more connected and more efficient world.

By enabling our customers to digitize processes, bridge sets of data, and implement more connected models of work, we are helping them to continuously optimize their operations. Here are some of the key ways we’re helping them do this.

Seeing anew with augmented reality

Digital technologies hold the power of visualization. With them, we can layer digital directly information onto the real world. Everything we need is suddenly at our fingertips.

Many companies are now making use of augmented reality (AR) to improve the efficiency and productivity of frontline work. With smart glasses or headsets, workers have key information on the go, meaning they can work with more ease, efficiency, and speed.

One company making use of this technology is the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC). One of the largest bottlers for the Coca-Cola Company in terms of volume, it has sales of more than two billion units annually.

The company now uses vision picking with TeamViewer Frontline to streamline operations and reduce error rates. With our solution, it has been able to achieve 99% picking accuracy and a 6-8% increase in performance. It has done this by making use of key digital information in the real world.

Leveraging data with digital twins

Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical objects, systems, or processes that simulate their real-world counterparts in real-time. These offer lots of operational benefits, including increased efficiency and improved decision-making and adaptability.

We’re seeing that digital twins are proving particularly useful in low-margin industries that already have a lot of 3D data to hand—aerospace, transportation, and other large projects—and where it’s simply not possible to troubleshoot or train on the real thing.

In the case of training, as my colleague Lukas Bertram put it in a recent article, digital twins offer a unique solution, supporting people to learn in a space when “nothing can break.”

As digital information, they also support the creation of searchable and trackable training programs capable of continuously changing and improving in response to user needs.

And their value doesn’t end there. By translating the real machines, systems, and processes into usable data, digital twins can also be plugged into further data sets.

In our case, Frontline’s integration with Siemens Teamcenter—a product lifecycle management (PLM) platform—allows digital twin technology to be used once the product has been passed onto the customer, resulting in improved troubleshooting and reduced costs for the manufacturer.

Even better support with spatial computing

Broadly speaking, spatial computing is technology that integrates and interacts with the physical world in a three-dimensional space. This encompasses AR, virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies, along with physical devices like the Apple Vision Pro.

One example is Spatial Support, TeamViewer’s recently launched app for the Apple Vision Pro. Leveraging the device’s incredible fidelity, the app enables support that’s more supportive than ever before.

Continuous learning with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has also improved efficiency and productivity in the industrial sector, where companies are using it to increase efficiency and productivity, reduce costs and errors, and drive innovation across their operations.

How does it do this? Primarily through automating certain, more menial tasks, which frees workers up for more meaningful work. At the same time, AI can monitor and analyze large sets of data. From this, it can generate valuable new insights to continuously improve processes.

That’s not to say that AI doesn’t bring any challenges—it does, among them legal, compliance, and security issues, as well as the issue of data dependence—but its capacity to connect and bridge gaps in knowledge remains huge.

Driving connection with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

At its simplest, the IIoT describes an interconnected network of industrial devices and systems. With the help of sensors, software, and other technologies, it helps companies to collect, exchange, and analyze data to continuously improve industrial processes.

This enriched way of seeing can bring transformative benefits to your company, among them increased operational efficiency, productivity, and quality control.

Not to mention the benefit of remote monitoring and management, which helps to boost security and reduce costly downtime.

The future: More connected than ever before

These strategies are now playing a role in a much more connected model of industry, which, through the role of some of the above strategies, is slowly but surely replacing the traditional, monolithic model.

At TeamViewer, our mission is to create a world a works better, and the way to do this is to use technology to create bridges between the digital and material worlds.

We do this, primarily, through a process of visualization. By digitalizing processes, we can create a set of visual clues to be used in the real world. These clues can then be plugged into different sets of data, with the possibility of increased visibility and productivity across an entire network.

And this isn’t some far-off dream. It’s already happening right now, for example in Hyundai Group’s state-of-the-art Innovation Center in Singapore. Opened in 2023, this is a fully functional smart factory, connecting humans, robots and logistics.

Among other things, the center makes use of digital twin technology, automated material handling systems, AR, and spatial computing with TeamViewer Frontline. Thanks to this incredibly connected production model, customers can visit, order a car, and drive it away in just three hours.

Summary

Digitalization is not just a buzzword; it’s a new way of seeing reshaping industry. Technologies like IIoT, AR, digital twins, spatial computing, and AI are revolutionizing operations, driving efficiency, and enhancing productivity worldwide.

As we can see from examples like Coca-Cola HBC and Hyundai, the shift to digital operations is already well underway, breaking down traditional boundaries between digital and real worlds.

To stay competitive and reap these benefits, embracing digital transformation is crucial. And at TeamViewer, we can help you on your way into this new era of connectivity and efficiency—whatever industry you happen to be in.

Mei Dent

Member of the Executive Board and CPTO (Chief Product and Technology Officer) at TeamViewer

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Mei Dent has an excellent track record as a technology executive in the software and IT industry. She started her career as a software developer at IBM and spent nearly 25 years in various product and engineering-related leadership roles at Canadian software giant OpenText. As part of the senior leadership team of the company’s software development organization, she was responsible for global engineering practices and processes for security, performance, user experience, and reusable and shared services. In her most recent role as CTO at customer communications management and engagement software provider Doxim, Mei led the entire technology organization and scaled it to support the company’s growth.