For executives leading chemical, oil and gas, and manufacturing organizations, margin expansion has become one of the most difficult challenges of the decade. Volatility has replaced predictability. Commodity cycles remain unforgiving. Energy prices swing with little warning. Skilled labor is retiring faster than it can be replaced. Yet expectations from boards and shareholders remain unchanged: protect margins, improve EBITDA, and deliver growth, even in tightening markets.
“In most boardrooms, the first instinct is still to look outward,” says Sundeep Ravande, CEO and Co-Founder of Innovapptive. “New markets, acquisitions, pricing strategies. But for many industrial companies, the biggest margin opportunity is not outside the organization. It is buried inside daily execution.”
That opportunity often goes unnoticed because it does not show up as a single line item. Instead, it leaks quietly through overtime, contractor dependency, reactive maintenance, bloated backlogs, and delayed work execution. Individually, these inefficiencies feel manageable. Collectively, they represent tens of millions of dollars in lost value that compounds year after year.
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Execution Is the Hidden Cost Center No One Owns
Across process industries, the operational blueprint is remarkably similar. Operators conduct rounds and flag issues. Maintenance plans and executes work. Warehouses stage and issue parts. Environmental health and safety oversees permits and compliance. On paper, the system works. In reality, execution breaks down between handoffs.
“What we see over and over again is that no one system orchestrates how work actually gets done,” Ravande explains. “Information is fragmented. Knowledge lives in people’s heads. Decisions are delayed because data arrives too late.”
Traditional enterprise systems were never designed to solve this problem. Enterprise resource planning and enterprise asset management platforms excel at recording transactions and managing assets, but they were not built to guide frontline execution in real time. As a result, plants operate reactively, responding to failures rather than preventing them.
“These execution gaps are not operational inconveniences,” Ravande says. “They are financial problems. And the C suite is increasingly recognizing that.”
Why AI and Connected Workers Are Changing the Margin Equation
A growing number of industrial leaders are now reframing margin expansion as an execution challenge rather than a market challenge. The shift begins by digitizing how frontline work is planned, executed, and validated using artificial intelligence and connected worker platforms to orchestrate daily operations.
“This is not about digitizing paper or adding another tool,” Ravande notes. “It is about connecting people, processes, and workflows so execution becomes predictable, measurable, and repeatable.”
When frontline teams are connected through digital workflows, organizations gain visibility into how work is actually performed. Artificial intelligence can then identify patterns, including where delays occur, why preventive maintenance slips, where overtime spikes, and how resources are misallocated.
At one United States based manufacturing site, this approach revealed inefficiencies that had long been accepted as the cost of doing business. By orchestrating daily routine maintenance digitally and applying AI driven insights, the site dramatically reduced reliance on contractors and overtime while improving maintenance planning discipline.
“The results were not incremental,” Ravande says. “They were structural.”
The site saw a sharp reduction in contractor headcount. Overtime dropped by more than half. Preventive maintenance overtook reactive work. Maintenance backlog was cut by more than half. Working capital previously tied up in excess inventory was released, and the site generated more than twelve million dollars in annual operating savings.
Scaled across the enterprise, the opportunity exceeded forty million dollars in EBITDA improvement, without layoffs, asset sales, or major capital investment.
Why This Matters to CEOs, COOs, and CFOs
What makes this shift significant for executive leadership is that it reframes digital transformation as a margin expansion program rather than an information technology initiative.
“Connected worker platforms succeed when leadership treats execution discipline as a governance issue,” Ravande explains. “This is about accountability across operations, maintenance, environmental health and safety, and stores, not about technology alone.”
When execution becomes visible, performance conversations change. Instead of debating anecdotal explanations for downtime or backlog growth, leaders can focus on facts. Instead of hiring more people to compensate for inefficiency, organizations improve how work flows through the system.
“Every additional percentage point of wrench time, every shift from emergency to planned maintenance, drops straight to the bottom line,” Ravande says.
For a typical process industry company spending more than one hundred million dollars annually on maintenance operating expenses, even a modest improvement translates into millions in recurring EBITDA gains. Unlike external growth strategies, these gains compound year after year.
Execution Discipline as a Leadership Advantage
What many executives underestimate is how deeply execution quality influences culture, safety, and employee retention. When frontline teams operate in reactive environments, frustration rises, shortcuts emerge, and institutional knowledge walks out the door with retiring workers. Digitally enabled execution creates clarity, confidence, and consistency for the workforce, which in turn reduces risk and improves morale.
“People want to do good work,” Ravande says. “When you give them clear instructions, timely data, and the ability to see the impact of their actions, performance improves naturally. That is not a technology effect. That is a leadership outcome.”
Organizations that treat execution as a strategic asset rather than a cost center are better positioned to weather labor shortages and regulatory pressure. They also create a foundation for scaling operations without proportionally increasing headcount or complexity.
A Growth Strategy Hidden in Plain Sight
The irony, Ravande notes, is that many organizations pursue external growth before fixing internal execution.
“We spend enormous amounts of capital chasing growth outside our walls,” he says. “But if you cannot execute reliably with the resources you already have, no acquisition or market expansion will fix your margin problem.”
AI enabled connected worker strategies, such as those advanced by Innovapptive, allow companies to turn execution into a competitive advantage. By making frontline work predictable and data driven, organizations unlock value that was always there but never visible.
“The next frontier of margin expansion is not about doing more,” Ravande concludes. “It is about executing better. When you connect your frontline with the right workflows and intelligence, you do not just save money. You fundamentally change how the business performs.”
For CEOs facing relentless pressure to deliver results, the hidden forty million dollars inside their operations may be the most sustainable growth engine they have.
