How Internet of Things is redefining corporate strategies

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The IoT (Internet of Things) is fast becoming an essential source of data; its volumes limitless. Unlimited AI, social networks, applications, sensors and captors, among other things, are only adding to the soaring data and content. By 2030, the total volume produced could reach 1 yottabyte – that’s a trillion terabytes or a million trillion megabytes.

With the power of IoT, more and more products are getting connected and delivering a huge value for the business, partners and customers. For instance, in case of manufacturing, predictive maintenance is becoming a priority. Sensors measure parameters from vibration, temperature to noise levels or energy consumption. Edge data analytics determine the state of the equipment, potential anomalies and delivers early indications of failure.

Other use case is of retail, where data at the point of sale or in the warehouse can be combined with data from various sources such as prevailing weather, special offers or seasonal events to improve quality of service, optimise commercial spaces or deliver personalised information. It has crossed all event horizon; the gravitational pull has grown so enormous that the corporates cannot move in any other direction, but towards and with IoT.

So, what does it mean for the corporate and what levers must be thought through to strategise it?

1. Connectedness – How do I connect my product; how do I get more insights of customer experience. It has been proven that connected devices deliver better customer experience and increased value. They provide competitive advantage, the key being connectivity.
2. Insights and artificial intelligence – Use of machine learning, pattern seeking, artificial intelligence to generate insights, provide recommendations etc.
3. Security – IoT also brings significant challenges: from cybersecurity and computing capabilities to sustainability.
4. Connectivity - Today, cellular and LAN technologies compete to provide low powered infrastructures and reach to IoT. With the advent of 5G, this enhances further the business case of IoT.
5. Product engineering – Continuous feedback from customers through various channels (Social, IoT, Mobile apps etc).
6. Data privacy - Companies are creating huge value out of the vast amount of data being generated and at the same time maintaining the sensitivity of the data and managing the same.
7. Technology evolution – It is quite important for the corporate to be abreast with the new technology. For IoT as well, there are few disruptive evolutions happening. For example, Edge Computing, the transfer of intelligence to the edge from cloud, so that processing happens near to where the data is generated. This in conjunction with a higher density of smart devices will require adaptions on how AI operates and will require larger processing power at the edge and in the devices. Second evolution which we see is Swarm Computing, where the edge gateways forming a mesh to provide collective intelligence system for self-adaption like autonomous systems.
8. Economy of data – Data is the new oil, how the data gets generated could be used to drive new business models.

It is not something as a one-shot transformation, but it is an ongoing continuum, where the corporate needs to focus on developing, refining strategies and approach to implement integrated digital initiatives and the ecosystem that could deliver value at each step to the customers and business partners thus reinventing relationship with them.