Technology is worthless without the knowledge of how to apply it in order to maximise its benefits and efficiency. At Radix, their engineers combine knowledge of the process industry with digital solutions, IT and OT to assist organisations throughout their Digital Transformation journey. We spoke to Alexander Clausbruch, Co-Founder and CEO North America at Radix on the trends, challenges and future of the process industry in North America and globally.

How is Radix’s business model and go-to-market strategy shaping the company in North America?
Our position is different from your typical consulting IT company. We see the value in using technology readily available to bring results right now, instead of only focusing on the future. We implement technologies that enable huge ROI for clients in the short term to guarantee the results that they expect. We are unique in the fact that we are basically a group of engineers who understand the business and process while having that integral digital knowledge.
What are the key trends in industries such as energy, manufacturing and infrastructure going into 2025?
In many of these industries, organisations’ operations span continents. Technology across these sites are very different, meaning the way they are structured also differs. Collating the information is a big challenge for these companies and for us as we need to organise all this information in a way to implement digital solutions on a large scale.
Additionally, companies want to see these technologies used across their global operations. How technology is used and interacted with differs from culture to culture. Because of this, we are seeing a focus on adoption, with organisations wanting to make sure their end users are getting the most out of the solutions also.
Increasing performance is always a focus of day-to-day operations. We are seeing lots of changes in the supply chain process where companies have to adapt quickly to a new environment. Many organisations are trying to optimise their supply chain operations to combat this.
What key elements of operational processes are most effectively leveraged using AI?
The biggest use of GenAI we are seeing is in the development of unique interfaces for accessing data, information and applications in a company’s operations. The main benefit is the way you interact with your system; it is significantly improved versus the older technology. AI helps you to find the best information, whether that be through use-cases or previous reports – it’s as if you have a sailor helping you navigate a sea of information. GenAI interfaces allow experts to use their natural language to talk to the system. This requires training the system to understand the language of your organisation so its help can be specific.
What advancements do you anticipate in data management and analytics and how will this support operations?
You cannot solve everything with data. You need to combine engineering modules with data, which is what we call hybrid intelligence – using data but relying on engineering equations. Data analytics is non-linear, you won’t have data for all scenarios, so we are seeing the combination of data with simulation tools using AI. You need to be careful when you use these bespoke, customisable methods, however the results are much better.
We are finding that companies have huge amounts of data that is not stored correctly or managed properly which is causing problems when building applications. Organisations are interested in solutions that converge, contextualise and manage their data.
How can technologies like AI and data analytics contribute to building a more sustainable world while improving efficiencies and delivering on the ROI?
We have seen the use of digital tools that can simulate the carbon footprint of companies and analytics that calculate emissions. Geopolitics is changing and sustainability is less of a focal point than it was 5 years ago, however it is still an important topic and always will be.
We always try to introduce solutions that combine sustainability goals with ROI, whether that be increasing efficiency, reducing expenses or making money. Some solutions can simulate decades into the future to look at the potential carbon footprint using different technologies. Furthermore, reductions of emissions are related to energy efficiency, meaning a better ROI for clients.
What key digital transformations or trends are you seeing across the US and what are some of the barriers preventing companies from reaching their digitalisation goals?
The main problem today is not technology, it’s the adoption and application of it. Many companies in the US are investing millions in new technology, but don’t get the results they expect because technology itself doesn’t solve the problem. You need to understand how you extract data from that technology. At Radix, we don’t develop technology, we work with technology; we apply technology to our clients to maximise its usefulness.
Insufficient data is also a barrier. Companies don’t have the data they think they do. Often, when we look closer at an organisations data, we see the quality is poor, it is not contextualised or there is information missing.
Many think everything should be solved with the same standardised solutions. For example, the idea that GenAI should be solving all the problems in the world when it doesn’t and can’t. We need to see where it fits well and helps, and where it doesn’t.
What is your view of cross-partner/company/customer data sharing for insights and innovation?
I see two opposing trends developing depending on the industry. For example, companies in the oil and gas upstream market typically invest together and share ownership of the assets and consequentially share the data. There are obvious benefits to cross-company sharing as large, representative data gives more accurate insights for organisations.
However, there is also a trend emerging, especially in the US, where organisations are becoming very strict on data protection. Companies are starting to view data as an asset itself and therefore an avenue for monetisation, selling their data to competitors. I think in the future data will become even more protected as companies start to view it as a competitive advantage.
What does 2025 look like for Radix?
We are very excited for 2025. We are seeing results from scalable, global projects which makes us confident in the replication of these solutions in other sectors. Furthermore, there are some breakthroughs incoming that we are interested in exploring. The integration of robotics with AI will have a strong influence on the process industry in the future and we are examining this trend heading into 2025.