Despite modern solution providers and open-source tools becoming a norm in the market, ensuring a smooth IoT transformation can feel like taming a speeding, unleashed bull. That being said, IoT transformations have become central to businesses that want to stay ahead. With the pace of digital transformation journeys accelerating, businesses are increasingly looking at how to derive the most value from their IoT strategies. This is perhaps why IoT solutions are mushrooming as more businesses get on board and deploy the technology.
Data shows that the IoT market is expected to grow to $2,465.26 billion by 2029. There’s no slowing down, and why would it?
After all, IoT solutions help:
- Improve connectivity and tracking
- Optimize for cost-efficiency
- Empower teams with real-time actionable insights.
While the benefits might make it lucrative to jump into IoT transformations quickly, making it effective to derive value demands an expert hand at play.
The perceived monetary benefits and overall business profits from IoT transformation aren’t always realized. There is also a stark difference between implementing IoT solutions and leveraging them to the fullest.
The difference between businesses that managed to overcome these challenges and those still figuring it out is the strategies they implemented. Wondering what they are?
Here are a few tried-and-tested strategies.
“The difference between businesses that managed to overcome these challenges and those still figuring it out is the strategies they implemented.”
-Naveen Kumar Vadapalli
Getting your Infrastructures Ready
According to IoT Analytics, there were 12.2 billion active endpoints in 2021. But as companies rush to adopt an IoT platform, enabling continuous and steady communication for different components can become quite complicated without the right IoT infrastructures.
This is where businesses first need to evaluate whether they have the basics covered to build an effective platform. While an efficient IoT infrastructure isn’t standardized in any way, a few must-have components include:
- Cybersecurity
- Cloud infrastructure
- Systems Integration
- Application development
- Software management
IoT Journey Strategies
The first step businesses need to take is to ask whether they have the right solutions, talent, and ability to build an adequate IoT infrastructure. The answers should tell where the gaps are and what they should do to bridge them.
They also need to consider their existing legacy systems and how to integrate them into their IoT transformation. Remember that non-compliance is costly, even disastrous, depending on the infraction.
Making the Most of IoT Data
One of the primary purposes of undertaking an IoT journey is to understand customers’ needs better and create products based on data-based insights from IoT platforms and devices. This is where having a clear data strategy for mining and analytics for the entire lifecycle goes a long way. Businesses need to account for a seamless process of integrating data into their IoT strategies to facilitate a continuous and seamless refinement of products, software, and applications.
Having a reliable IoT platform is half the game won as it helps connect different components of an IoT infrastructure, collects relevant data for analytics, helps lay the groundwork to ensure secure connections, and helps developers create new applications. Businesses should focus on creating a platform that brings visibility and data-based intelligence to their processes and products.
Creating the Right Products
How well-designed are your IoT products? Can they integrate seamlessly with the cloud ecosystems and legacy systems equally effectively? How do they fare in user experience? Do they derive the right kind of data for analytics?
IoT products need sophistication, vision, and compliance to be designed. They must be effective and performant while having a solid foundation for the firmware to allow upgrades as customer needs and requirements evolve. Here, intention matters.
There must be a reason for the interconnectivity between tools in the tech stack to drive value to users. For instance, cloud migration services can help optimize infrastructures and establish a viable roadmap. These ensure security and compliance, both crucial facets.
This needs experts and the right talent to see how far a product can go, enable seamless integration, and ensure a clear lifecycle for each IoT product being created.
Businesses also need to consider the data derivation and the usability of each dataset to bring efficiency and visibility to their processes. They need to enable the right data journeys for their connected products to derive value from them and, eventually, help make the Internet of Things transformation journey successful.
Institute Policies For Adoption
Companies looking to advance technologically must also consider the human element, as IoT does not exist in a vacuum. Data gathered needs to be distilled for insights that can then be actioned, and this is where the human buy-in comes into play in IoT journey strategies.
So, in any IoT journey, companies must have policies that cater to educating the workforce, upskilling, and reskilling to drive adoption. If the workforce fails to realize the true value of IoT or how to work with it, a significant chunk of IoT benefits is left untapped. At this stage, management must institute policies and processes to manage, assess, and intervene. This works proactively, allowing better adoption across all operation verticals.
A sound strategy is vital to the Internet of Things journey, beginning with the building blocks. Starting from scratch isn’t the worst approach, but partnering with a dedicated service provider specializing in IoT may be better. There are many upsides to going this route, including a market-relevant strategy that leverages innovation in real-time.
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