A global study of business leaders conducted by SAS, Deloitte and Intel claims to have shown organisations combining artificial intelligence with their IoT initiatives get much better results than those using IoT alone.
For the study, 450 business leaders from around the world were asked about their use of IoT and AI technologies. IDC conducted research and analysis for the study.
The study, AIoT- How IoT Leaders Are Breaking Away, coins the term ‘AIoT’ for IoT enhanced with AI. SAS COO, Oliver Schabenberger said most successful IoT operations are actually AIoT operations.
“AIoT is defined as decision making aided by AI technologies in conjunction with connected IoT sensor, system or product data,” he said.
“AI technologies include deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, voice recognition and image analysis.”
Intel Americas’ chief data scientist Melvin Greer said AI closed the loop in an IoT environment where IoT devices gather or create data, with AI helping to automate important choices and actions based on that data.
“Today, most organisations using IoT are only at the first ‘visibility’ phase where they can start to see what’s going on through IoT assets,” he said. “But they’re moving toward the reliability, efficiency and production phases, which are more sophisticated and require stronger AI capabilities.”
AIoT essential for effective competing
According to the study, not only is AIoT already generating results, but organisations pursuing an IoT strategy say they cannot compete effectively without using AI.
“This is a striking study finding considering that only a few years ago, the IoT was in its fledgling stages, and AI developments were unfolding on their own track,” it says.
“While combining the two was not unthinkable, it did not seem like a practical reality.”
Jason Mann, vice president of IoT at SAS, said companies are primarily focused on three core business objectives with their emerging AIoT capabilities.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest in using AIoT to achieve higher levels of operational efficiency, to improve top-line growth and to enhance customer engagement.
“For some, it’s all of the above, although today we mostly see customers experimenting in one area, achieving success, and then expanding out from there.”
The study found companies that have developed AIoT capabilities report stronger results across critical organisational goals including the ability to speed up operations, introduce new digital services, improve employee productivity and decrease costs.
- Companies using IoT data to speed up operations without AI saw a 32 percent increase; companies adding AI to the mix saw speeds improve by 53 percent.
- Seventy nine percent of senior leaders are involved in IoT project decisions, and 92 percent of those leaders say that the value of AIoT exceeds expectations.
- Sixty eight percent of companies rely on IoT data to inform daily operational decisions through spreadsheets and other non-AI technology.
- Only 12 percent of respondents use IoT to inform planning decisions, but when AI enters the picture, respondents using the data for daily planning increases to 31 percent.
- Thirty four percent of respondents said increasing revenue is the top goal for using AIoT, followed by improving the ability to innovate (17.5 percent), offering customers new digital services (14.3 percent), and decreasing operational costs (11.1 percent).
- Business intelligence (33 percent), near-real-time monitoring and visibility (31 percent), and condition-based monitoring (30 percent) topped the list of analysis techniques used with IoT projects.
