13 Tech Accelerators | Conquer the Technology Mountain
Alasdair Monk
Group Digital and Product Director | Driving Customer led Digital Transformation, Delivering Growth through Services
Article 2 in series of 3 | PaaS Digital Transformation
In the first part of our series, we outlined how successful companies are focusing their digital transformations on strategic differentiation in their engagement with customers. Unravelling the essence of PaaS (Product-as-a-Service) and why it is gaining prominence in today's market. In this second article, we move beyond the softer issues key to Digital Transformation covered in earlier articles*. Revealing 13 Tech Accelerators to drive your PaaS offering.?
PaaS relies on real-time monitoring and analysis to optimise performance and deliver value to customers. As the worlds of operational and information technology collide with accelerating AI, it can be both daunting and confusing for the uninitiated. Making the enabling technology look like a mountain to climb! Raising questions as to what technology to use and when? What are the design considerations? How do you balance costs whilst proving value? How do I future proof my solution…and so the list goes on!
The following 13 Tech Accelerators provide guidance to enable you to extract the value from Connected Services as preparation for advanced Predictive Services and beyond. Helping you with the lessons I’ve learnt from both the ups and the downs of over two decades delivering successful business and digital transformations.? Tips that will help you hone your ‘mountaineering skills’ and enjoy the views from the foothills, in preparation for conquering the technology mountain.?
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Solution Design and Technology Tips
1.???? Sustainable Design | A sustainable technology strategy starts with a great vision. These three roadmaps enable you to go from vision to execution:
a.????? Horizon Plan | Capture the broader vision aligned to the business objectives and market priorities. Providing context with its short-, mid- and long-term horizons. From basic to advanced services, from product visibility to predictive maintenance and beyond. Enabling you to frame the high-level solution requirements and avoid short-term solutions that limit the extensibility of your offering.
b.???? Current Year Roadmap | When starting out the current year plan should focus upon the basics. Getting connected and enhancing product visibility. Defining the users and targeting basic solutions to unlock and demonstrate value. Providing indicative release dates, whilst retaining the agility to respond to emerging customer demands.
c.????? Quarterly Roadmap | Guide agile development with a quarterly roadmap.? Providing greater detail aligned to the prioritised backlog of features and targeted releases. Cascading into increasingly detailed use cases and sprint planning cycles with release dates, enabling delivery teams to execute and validate the offering, whilst giving stakeholders visibility and confidence.
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2.???? Focus on Execution | Streamline communication and free your focus for development and value delivery.? Automating your plan through integrated product planning platforms such as Aha and JIRA, cutting down reporting and duplication of effort. Enabling you to produce a strategy that cascades and updates data directly from your longer-term strategy and roadmap to your current backlog. Providing a single source of the truth for stakeholders,
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3.???? Validate the Value | Continuously validate everything from the business model to the solution, to the technology.? Whether it’s a dynamic mock-up of a website solution or a presentation or brochure explaining your business model, this will ensure that you optimise your investment by focusing on the things that matter most to your customer. Adapting and pivoting to their needs whilst maintaining momentum.
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4.???? Connect and Collect | Resist the temptation of overcomplicating your solution with advanced analytics and AI in the first instance. Start with the basics of IoT. It provides near real time insight through continuous monitoring. Prioritise the right application and it will unlock value. Remember execution is incremental, it is the vision which is transformational.
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5.???? Build from your Core | Where possible, enhance an existing physical service. Leverage expert insights from your service, account teams or service partners to generate value from basic anomaly detection associated with sub-optimal performance.
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6.???? Your Experts are your AI | Start with something as simple as a temperature measurement. It can indicate a fault to an expert. Enabling your existing account teams to generate new business, whilst building the platform for more advanced insight and future services.
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7.???? Off the Shelf | Use an off the shelf industrial IoT platform. They are increasingly standardised with industrial use cases to suit, easily configurable and feature software development kits, for when customisation or extension becomes critical as your offering becomes established.
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8.???? Basic Connectivity | Keep it simple. Start with basic connectivity that provides useful insight at a low cost. Target an application with simple connections to aid ease of installation and scaling. When connecting to existing industrial automation systems, ensure your solution supports configuration of standard industrial communication protocols (Modbus, Profibus etc.) to enable you to rapidly deploy and scale.
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9.???? Plug ‘n’ Play | If adding new sensing capability, consider adding new low-cost non-intrusive wireless sensors such as temperature probes that indicate performance or reliability anomalies in your products. Low frequency data can be insightful in the hands of experts whilst minimising cost.
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10.? Start Compliant | When trialling, select devices for compliance as well as functionality. Whether it is sensors, gateways or edge computers, leverage off the shelf devices compliant with radio approvals and certifications for your target markets to avoid delays as you launch and scale.
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11.? Reduce the Data, Lower the Costs, Open the Market | Target low frequency applications that require the least amount of data to provide the greatest amount of value. ?High frequency applications with substantial continuous data hold the potential for great insight but add cost in every aspect of the technology stack. From data compression at the edge to the cloud, to added network and hardware costs and greater complexity in general.
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12.? Turn High-Cost into Low-Cost Applications | High frequency applications can be critical to optimising equipment performance e.g. cavitation detection on a pump or valve. Deploying them in the field at scale can be costly. Replicate failures and sub-optimal performance on the test stand or through simulation to identify anomalies in sensor data. This can then be used for simplified solutions in the field, such as prescriptive algorithms deployed on edge computers near the product being monitored.
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13.? Sustaining your Progress | You’ve climbed your first hill and honed your climbing skills!? To progress to the mountain, you need data beyond IoT.? Context to enable more advanced applications. From predicting remaining useful life of a part, to replacement parts availability, and scheduling corresponding service calls. Don’t worry, your choice of an off-the shelf IoT platform, likely has pre-built connectors enabling connectivity.? From CRM and Field Service Management to Machine Learning. Preparing you to conquer the mountain!
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Next Time
Remember Digital transformation is challenging. We’ve addressed the wider issues and the technology at its core. In the final part of our series, we’ll look at one of the other great challenges. 13 Monetisation Tips for your PaaS offering.? Helping you take the chance out of your Digital Transformation.
Related and Previous Articles in this Series
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If you – a colleague of friend - Need Help Now! Or are missing someone on your team to help with your transformation, I'm available for full-time or interim roles. Visit www.acmonk.com to learn more about how I can support you or reach me at [email protected]. Or simply share this link with someone you know who might need a helping hand.
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Great tips for digital transformation! Starting small can lead to big achievements. Keep pushing forward! Alasdair Monk