Setting Yourself Up For Success in IoT/IIoT

The Internet of Things / Industrial Internet of Things (IoT / IIoT), although not a new concept, is still a very "hot topic" among industrial giants, consumer product developers, tech enthusiasts and everyone in between. To level-set, IoT, in it's simplest form, is a system of connected digital and mechanical assets, objects and living creatures (yes, we "connect" animals and people these days) that have the ability to transfer data between one-another, without any human interaction. If you've been around manufacturing or industry a long time, you may remember when M2M or machine-to-machine communication was all the rage. You can think of IoT/IIoT as M2M 2.0

Whether you are looking to create software, hardware, reduce operating costs, increase profitability or anything else you can think of, there is almost always an application for IoT. There are 3 primary business drivers that I see in the market:

1. Lower Costs (increase efficiency asset optimization, maintenance reductions, etc.)
2. Engage Customers (new customer services, better customer experience, new consumer products)
3. Increase Sales (new business models, "______-as-a-service", learning consumer behavior)

Whatever your use case or business driver may be, it is paramount that you strategically approach your IoT initiative. Without the proper planning, you can almost guarantee that you will slip into the staggering 70-80% of projects that fail. To make sure you don't fall victim to your own innovation, I recommend a 6 step approach to properly plan and execute your next IoT initiative.

1) Establish a Business Case

It may seem obvious, but before you begin your IoT journey, it is critical that you have a clearly defined goal with measurable success criteria. According to CapGemini, 65% of companies surveyed could not articulate the business value of their IoT PoC. That means more than half of the folks "experimenting" with IoT are doing just that, experimenting. When you adopt technology just for the sake of adopting technology, you can almost guarantee that you will not get executive sponsorship to keep your science project alive.

Instead of jumping in with both feet immediately, take your time and really think about your desired outcome. Speak to stakeholders and get different perspectives on the outcome. Keep in mind, you should not only determine what you want to do, but also define measurable success criteria that will allow you to clearly define a "win". At the end of the day, you want to deliver the largest return on your investment and make the greatest impact to your organization possible.

2) Determine if IoT is the Right Fit

As much as I would love to tell you IoT can solve all of your problems, it can't (regardless of what that vendor is telling you). The reality is that IoT has some very real, very impactful potential, but it is not right for every use-case. Take a good look at your objective and success criteria, map that against what IoT has to offer, and make a conscious decision if that is the right path to take.

As technology-hungry consumers, we spend a lot of time "qualifying in" or justifying certain tech. Think about all of those gizmos and gadgets you've purchased over the years that you've hardly touched. This is no exception. IoT/IIoT is the new "shiny" tech, but you will only see a return on your investment if it is the right solution for the given problem.

3) Create a Roadmap

A high-level visual overview or summary of your IoT initiative will not only help you stay on track, but it will help you articulate the project to your stakeholders. This roadmap will serve as a guiding reference for the what and why of your project. Most importantly, it will aid your strategic approach to executing your vision.

Before you build your roadmap, it is important to identify your audience. It is not uncommon to create multiple roadmaps that articulate the vision in a relevant manner for different audiences.

For example, in an executive-facing meeting, you would want to have a roadmap that focuses on the vision and how it aligns to business objectives. When you address your engineers/developers, you would want a roadmap that focuses more on features and functionality.

4) Pick the Right Tech

Now that you've decided IoT is the right path, you have to decide what IoT solution will fulfill your needs and requirements. It is typical that there are two paths to chose from immediately: Do I build or Do I buy?

According to MachNation, many companies build their own IoT platforms and then have “builder’s remorse”. "Why", you may ask?

• The costs to build and maintain the platform are higher than expected.
• The effort to provide business units with the desired IoT platform functionality is greater than anticipated.
• Balancing platform integration requirements becomes very hard (more on this later)

Assuming you have made the wise decision to purchase a platform that will propel you to IoT success, there are a lot of things you need to consider, but here are a few that come to mind:

• Do I need edge computing on-premise?
• How secure is the product?
• What kind of analytic tooling is available?
• Can I run the platform on my own servers?
• How scalable is this thing?
• Is it difficult to use and maintain?
• How quickly can this software accelerate my initiative?

There are a tremendous amount of vendors in this space (more than 400 reputable platforms). I strongly suggest to leverage analyst reports from reputable companies like , Gartner, MachNation and Forrester to evaluate what product is right for you. You may find that no vendors offer the perfect platform, but I would be surprised if you can't find one that checks 80% of the boxes

5) Plan for Integration

As companies plan their strategic approach to IoT, there is one segment that almost always gets forgotten: integration. Your IoT data may enlighten you and bring about a tremendous amount of information that you never had available, but it only becomes truly valuable when you can enrich and contextualize it with your other enterprise systems.

Imagine you see a reading from a sensor that says "70 degrees". You can understand the message, but really, what is it telling you? Without understanding if it is day or night, summer or winter, at the equator or the North Pole, you have very little context around what 70 degrees means. This applies across the board for IoT. Without planning to enrich your data with your disparate enterprise systems, you will generally get limited ROI on the IoT project.

6) Analyze the Results

The "final" step is to analyze the results, compare them to your measurable success criteria (step 1) and evaluate the business impact of the project. Was it a success? Was it a failure? You will notice that I put "final" in quotes because this is an iterative process. After you complete the cycle and have evaluated the business impact, it is time to innovate! By leveraging these results, you can begin to transform your business by putting the data to work. You now have the insights needed to reduce costs, increase productivity or take action on whatever your business driver may have been.

Alternatively, if you did not obtain the results you were after, this is the time to go back to the drawing board, reflect on what has been done and modify whatever needs to be adjusted. Maybe a piece of technology is missing to give you the insights you desire. Maybe the business objective wasn't as clearly defined as you originally thought. That's ok, now is your chance to address the gaps and try again.

Let's be honest, IoT/IIoT is hard. There is no "one size fits all" approach to make IoT successful, especially not on the implementation side of the house. By being aware of the challenges and making a conscious effort to plan, strategically, gives you the best chance of success. Clearly defining your goals, picking the right technology and carefully analyzing the business impacts of the project is a fantastic way to ensure longevity and success of your initiative.