The Latest Trends in Engineering IT Tools

The engineering industry is poised to undergo some monumental changes in the next ten years. A range of factors are putting pressure on engineering teams to transform their practices, become more agile, and reduce the time to market of new products.

This is due in part to a global supply chain shortage being driven by the continued labor shortage. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, industrial engineering jobs will grow by 10% by 2029, further exacerbating current labor shortages.

According to an Engineering and Design Services Industry Assessment survey, the lack of qualified workers is the single largest barrier to engineering firm growth. According to the report, 97% of respondents agreed that the industry labor market was tight, 87% of respondents had at least one open position at their firm, and 74% of respondents predict there will be an increase in hiring over the next year at their firm. Due to the shortages, 64% of respondents believe their firms will see an increased backlog of projects over the next year.

In the current environment, engineering teams are being forced to do more with less. They must be more agile and efficient than ever and cannot afford downtime. As a result, more and more engineers are turning to innovative IT tools that streamline processes and prevent downtime like project data management software, online collaboration suites, and SaaS backup tools. Let’s take a look at how these IT tools are benefiting engineers.

Project data management

Product data management tools allow engineers to manage design data and engineering processes in one central location. This is useful for organizing product-related information, tracking revisions, collaborating, managing change orders, generating Bills of Materials, and more.

Project data management tools promote company-wide data sharing and break down functionality siloes, which can dramatically accelerate new product development with a more parallelized process.

In fact, research shows PMD tools can speed up development and cut the design cycle in half. According to a report, seamless integration of data reduces design cycles by more than 50%.

Online collaboration

Due to the continued presence of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work remains popular. Whether teams are still working entirely remotely or dealing with team members forced to quarantine after a positive test, online collaboration tools have become essential.

By now, video conferencing tools like Zoom, Skype, and Microsoft Teams have become synonymous with remote work and this trend looks poised to continue. According to a report looking at technology trends, more than 90% of those surveyed acknowledge the advantages of online meetings and training.

Beyond video-based collaborative tools, engineers are also increasingly relying on tools like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace which enable secure collaboration and increased productivity.

Data backup and recovery

According to a survey of engineers at 72 multinational industrial and manufacturing companies, manufacturing and industrial firms are taking a near $1 trillion a year financial hit due to unplanned downtime.

In engineering environments, reliable access to critical data is vital to maintaining business operations. For this reason, engineering teams are increasingly relying on data backup and recovery solutions to prevent data loss and ensure they have uninterrupted access to the data they need.

Backupify is an all-inclusive solution purpose built for your organization’s data backup and recovery needs. Having a cloud-to-cloud backup solution enables engineers to easily recover data in the event of malicious or accidental deletion. Backupify guards against data loss from critical Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace apps.

Want to start utilizing the latest IT tools in your engineering operation? Try Backupify today.