Why only the CEO can own IoT

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is profit.

But knowledge is passing companies by in a great flood.

Data is more important than it has ever been. Companies have teams of analysts and sophisticated tools to sift through reams of data. Sometimes deploying primitive AI. But typically this data, is the data generated by the company’s marketing or sales teams, or sometimes by the market research division.

Meanwhile, a flood of data goes ignored, or worse, unnoticed. I’m referring to the data generated by IoT. Data from the very products they sell and services they deliver. Every year companies in the automotive, industrial, consumer electronics and other sectors create, move, sell, install and maintain millions of products. Many of these devices come equipped with sophisticated sensors that are required for them to function. These sensors record data constantly, in some cases every second. Appropriately analysed and reported, this data is no less valuable than the very products the company sells. In fact, there is a strong argument now that this data is more important than the products that product it. IoT data can be used to identify gaps, solve major problems, create more accurate customer profiles and spark innovation in a million other ways.

Unfortunately, this data is too often underutilised. Sometimes it is gifted to other organisations that produce the sensors or hold the data on the company’s behalf.

Why is this? For a start, it’s the scale of it. The very thing that makes this data so valuable is what stops companies from properly managing it. The fact that there’s so much information. Even the biggest companies can be completely overwhelmed, especially if they are technologically fractured.

Also, the bitter truth is that some companies simply don’t see the value of IoT data. Thus, the effort and investment isn’t there to reliably keep it flowing, or to collect and analyse it. In a data-driven business environment, this is an oversight that should not exist.

This brings me to the title of the article. I believe that managing IoT data is too big, and too important for a single department or division. The ownership must be taken by the CEO, and the way to do it is to create a “centres of excellence” within each company which will have experts from across the lines to untangle the IoT data knot. Problems of this scale can only be managed by experts from different disciplines, which is why the CEO’s involvement becomes crucial.

Another reason why I feel managing IoT data should have the CEOs personal involvement is that once put together; the value of data may exceed even the product the company sells. Take Caterpillar, for example. A global company that sells both machines and parts; it is positioned to collect detailed environmental data that many other companies and government agencies would need to deploy specialised and expensive teams to capture. Properly parsed, this data can result in incredibly valuable insights from locations where it is difficult or expensive to send data or survey teams.

Of course, with great data, comes great responsibility. What about sensitive data? What about privacy? What about local regulations? All very important questions, and another major reason for the CEO, as the person at whom the buck stops, to take charge of IoT data.

There is no doubt that in order to collect and analyse IoT data, the first step is risk assessment. Contingency plans need to be put in place and data filters need to be deployed. Security will obviously have to be tightened across the board, and products may have to be redesigned to ensure sensors cannot be tampered with. Once security measures are in place, then, and only then can a business go ahead with formulating their strategy and smoothing out regulatory issues. Who else but the CEO can organize deployment of resources at this scale?

Like all of technology, I believe that with time, mining IoT data is something all product companies will do. But for the immediate future, it remains a high-risk, high-reward venture.

However, if a proactive CEO decides to, a company’s resources can be efficiently mobilised to reduce the risks considerably. And the rewards are worth it. This kind of data can provide intelligence that will influence business decisions for decades. It can help companies plan marketing and promotions with much more accuracy, it can help them innovate with products in the right directions, it can generate predictive models that increase revenue – it can help a brand distinguish itself from its competitors and become a market leader.

I’ll leave you with an example, a speaker manufacturer (and Oracle customer) recently launched a fully enabled IoT speaker into the market. This speaker picked up sensory information from around it to improve sounds performance, including the amount of moisture in the air. Immediately this company noticed that many of these speakers were being placed in bathrooms. This data triggered an awareness campaign to advise customers against using the speaker in a humid or damp environment, thus saving ￡mm in repairs and reputation damage and furthermore this data prompted the successful launch of a new waterproof speaker.