Turning a Product into a Connected Experience

Arm recently co-hosted a virtual roundtable with our partner Mobica on the theme “Transforming with IoT to Product-as-a-Service.”  We brought together leaders from a variety of industries and backgrounds to discuss how to transform physical products into digitally connected services that can be used by consumers and businesses on a subscription basis.  

As most of the attendees were from technology backgrounds, I expected the conversation to focus on the Operating Tech (what the device does) and the Information Tech (how device data can be shared and used).  I anticipated a lot of talk about the complex and fragmented communications ecosystem that we have to work with (where is NB-IoT in the UK these days?) and discussion around user authentication, device authentication and security.   I was of course hoping IoT Device Management would be an important discussion point.  We did in fact discuss most of these topics, but for me, the most interesting part of the conversation explored the idea of how businesses can leverage IoT tech to radically transform the customer experience.  

Attaching a modem to a lawnmower is certainly possible and may yield some interesting data on product usage, but let’s be honest, there's not much in it for the consumer.  Adding IoT to products adds cost, complexity, and risk; and all that needs to be paid for by incremental value to consumers.  To find this new value, the IoT tech needs to be a fundamental enabler for entering new markets, expanding market share, increasing the volume or value of consumables, and/or extending the useful life of the product.    I think there was consensus amongst the group that IoT in consumer products absolutely needs to positively impact the customer experience to create new value for both the end-user and the business.

The roundtable discussion made me recall a recent “User Experience (UX) Workshop” which Arm hosted for a large consumer products company.  We spent a full day around whiteboards with people from product marketing, technology, product users, and UX experts. The day started with everyone being asked to describe what the intended end-user experience needed to be.   We then challenged our UX ideas to see if what we were describing was fundamentally better than the current customer experience – how could we use technology to creatively enhance the use of a product?   This proved much more complicated than I thought it would be when we started!  We were all excited about the information that could be pulled off connected devices and feed our insatiable desire for data, but we had to work harder to figure out how to make that relevant and valuable to the consumer.

We got there in the end (of course) and then we mapped every system, process, intervention, application, and individual that needed to interact to create the intended user experience.  It was an exhausting exercise, but we came away with a clear destination and a clear roadmap.  We were able to then work across five different companies who collaborated over six months to develop a fully functional product, service, and customer experience that was unique and had new intrinsic value.

I look forward to having more of these sessions where we can share, learn, and collaborate together (from the comfort of our home offices!).      Consumers are demanding more flexibility in how they use products, interact with brands, and place a much higher value on the “experience” of using a product and we have an opportunity to satisfy that demand through creative innovation and collaboration.