Image © Ram Kuppaswamy, SimpliCity.
A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit identifies a “path to business value” for IoT. Here’s some guidance for that path.
To journey without a destination is to wander aimlessly, and while it might have many serendipitous rewards, it rarely leads to an optimal outcome.
The adoption of IoT is no exception, but with the concept being relatively new and evolving rapidly having a vision of an ultimate ‘destination’ can require an understanding of the possibilities, evolutionary pathways and potential synergies between multiple technologies that might be beyond many organisations.
This is well demonstrated by a report from The Economist Intelligence Unit: The IoT Business Index 2020: a step change in adoption, sponsored by global semiconductor and software design company.
In compiling the report the EIU had the distinct advantage of being able to draw on similar research going back to the early days of IoT. It produced its inaugural IoT Business Index in 2013, to measure commercial adoption of the then-emerging technology, and repeated the exercise in 2017.
In the new edition the EIU observes of its 2013 edition: “Unsurprisingly, companies were in the nascent stages of IoT integration at that time.”
IoT “only marginal advance” since 2013
And it adds: “More surprising was the first follow-up study in 2017: despite considerable discussion, business adoption of the IoT had advanced only marginally in the intervening years.”
Commenting on the results of the 2020 survey, the EIU says a “path to business value” for IoT has now emerged. “Successful companies are those that plan a multi-year path towards … higher-value capabilities … [where] IoT data are merged with other data sets, incorporated into predictive or prescriptive analytics, and used to integrate processes that cross divisional and organisational boundaries.”
The report’s conclusion abounds with quotes from interviewees reflecting on the challenges of finding this “path to value”.
“You need someone who is a real visionary and is prepared to put their neck on the line and invest in something that is new,” says one. “Without that it can be hard for companies to move beyond the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of application- specific implementations.”
Another says: “I spend a lot of my time educating colleagues and customers on the potential of our platform strategy. You need to think beyond the existing barriers.”
A chief medical officer says: “You’ve got to open your mind to recognise that these [IoT] devices are not just devices: they are in fact platforms — in our case, platforms for therapy, for diagnostics and platforms for connected health allowing us to extract insight. That’s a paradigm shift.”
A roadmap is needed
In other words: it helps to have a map, a strategy, or a vision: one that at least recognises future possibilities even if it does not explain how they might be achieved.
A number of such roadmaps have been produced, and all have much in common. Here’s three that, blown up and pinned on the office wall would provide a continuous reminder of a future destination of IoT.
Ram Kuppusamy, director of Perth based IoT company, SimpliCity, has produced his ‘7A IoT Framework – shown at the top of this article – envisaging a seven stage evolution of IoT from simply providing awareness, to enabling full autonomy.
Back in 2014, the Harvard Business Review had the right idea, but lacked the insight that five years of development in enabling technologies like AI have provided.
Slightly more recently, in 2016, global IoT company Bsquare produced a white paper: Five Stages of IoT, which it summarised in this graphic.
And there are others (five stage models seem to be the most popular). None provide a detailed roadmap but keeping such a model front of mind would help answer the EIU report’s question: : “How can businesses ensure that the development, analysis and integration of IoT data are directed in the strategic interests of the company?”
