41 months to predict the future

I checked the weather forecast this morning. With that predictive data I made some decisions and plans. Shorts, not jeans. Bike ride this afternoon, hike on Sunday. We do that sort of “prescriptive” behavior all the time.

But as it relates to projects in IoT and Connected Products and Services, organizations get lost in the weeds. They get caught up in the complexities of “getting connected” and lose sight of the real objective, predicting the future and taking prescriptive action to adapt to that future, or alter it. ?Somewhere between the forward-thinking visionaries, and the IT, Operations, Engineering and other semi-siloed functions, the mission gets lost. Time and money are spent, and data is gathered. But we’re still not making great decisions about shorts or jeans.

It’s understandable. You can’t be predictive or prescriptive on day one. There are pre-requisite projects.? “Get the data” projects aren’t easy. They take a lot of time, 41 months(!) is the average time from project kick-off to first “connected product” revenue, according to a recent IoT Analytics report. And importantly, “getting connected” doesn’t require organizational or cultural change, just time and money.

Once you’re gathering “descriptive” data and build data history, smart people, or less smart people assisted by AI tools, can identify patterns.? Now you have some future predictive capability and can start making prescriptive changes to adapt to that new likelihood.

This is where companies come off the rails. You are 3+ years into your “connected” strategy, but it’s not going to create value until each siloed department changes their workflows to utilize the new data insights. Using it to adjust demand forecasts, change warranty terms and processes, reconfigure field support, adapt product roadmaps, adjust sales processes and channels, redefine pricing and business models to better fit how your product delivers value.?

None of those things are “natural” for most organizations. Without strong vision and leadership, most of that new-found data, and that ability to predict the future, withers on the vine.

With my history in the hardware and middleware side of things, I’ve been engaged with hundreds of companies that set out to “get connected.”? But it was a frustratingly small number of them that accomplished their end vision.

My recommendation?

Start the business process reviews in parallel to that “41 month, get the data project.” You don’t know what the data is yet, but you can make some safe assumptions about which processes will be impacted and begin the hard work of the change management process.

Put strong leadership in place with “big picture thinking”, a long attention span and inspiring change management skills.

There are many success stories out there, and the tech side of “getting connected” is getting better all the time. It’s time for the business side of things, particularly change management, to play catch-up.

Your take? Are we beyond the technology and integration hurdles and hindered primarily by organizational resistance to change??