Learn from IoT use cases and business models for better adoption

In a not-so-distant future, devices and things getting connected to internet will be an everyday phenomenon. IoT adoption by consumers and businesses is inevitable.

Today it seems that almost everything can be connected to the internet. Many organizations have realized the significance of IoT adoption, and have implemented IoT in their technology and product road map. It is a no brainer that indeed IoT has become a vital piece in the spectrum of innovation. Now the hype of IoT is at its peak. IoT offers new entrants the promise of revenue and ample of business opportunities. Even though IoT provides with increased interconnectivity a greater potential for taking a better business decision, experts have predicted that over two thirds of IoT projects fail.

This happens because several organizations just dive their heads around this technology and play with it. They do not prepare themselves to face the adaptation and implementation challenges. Let us first summarize the key challenges faced in IoT adoption:

• The requirements of a client may vary from one IoT project to another; from one industry to another. This makes it difficult for providers to determine the market fit for their IoT offering.
• There is a lack of clear business cases. This has lead to IoT implementation getting disconnected from businesses. Due to this, the business impact and associated revenue for providers get inhibited.
• Many providers struggle to differentiate their value propositions and capabilities in the market that are at the peak of the IoT hype cycle.
• An insufficient blend of technology and business skills on project teams also hampers the business impact and cause IoT project failure.

Studying IoT use case and business model is one of the most effective solutions to overcome adoption issues. Use cases help providers in validating target markets and quantify customer benefits. We suggest, you build a portfolio of use cases and business models that illustrate the real-world IoT solution and its value proposition to the customer.

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In this post, I present how studying use cases and business models helps us identify:

1.   Business Needs

As IoT solution implementation plays a key role in helping companies transform into digital businesses and providing new opportunities, IoT service providers are challenged with the task of addressing market requirements. Studying use cases and business models has enabled companies to recognize their business needs, and also helped them in differentiating products and services that they offer to the customer. Taking the approach of studying use cases and business models have enabled providers to maximize the market fit, while accelerating adoption by addressing their client’s primary pain points and minimizing costs.

2.   Implementation Challenges

IoT implementation faces several adoption and deployment challenges. Studying use cases and business models help in determining the topmost factors that are hampering the implementation of IoT. It helps product managers in deciding specific steps to target business and IT professionals for IoT solutions. This includes deciding on target personas for their offerings and capabilities.

A famous science fiction writer, William Gibson once said," The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." This is the exact case with the Internet of Things. Successful adoption of IoT project requires clear navigation of requirements from and between clients and providers. Providers can have a higher probability of success if they are well versed in crafting use cases and business models specific to IoT and establish an approach to escalate implementations of IoT.