Johannesburg, 28 May 2018
IOT goes beyond a multitude of devices enhanced by sensors connected to a vast network. It is a vital cog in the successful engine of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the era of digitisation.
With IOT, companies can leverage technology in ways they never imagined possible, as well as generate deeper insights that can be used to finetune business processes, change strategic direction and enhance customer service.
Implemented with clear business outcomes that have been developed in accordance with the unique challenges presented by sector and industry, IOT can reduce costs and risk, support the enterprises' steps towards compliance within the areas of health and safety, and improve client experiences.
IOT also has the potential to grow new revenue streams in new markets and has been said to be one of the most powerful tools enterprises can use to transform customer experience technologies.
It can also help enterprises embark on omnichannel strategies and engage with customers across platform, place and preference.
The bridge to success
For enterprises to succeed, they must focus on business objectives at the outset and develop a solution that wraps the potential and capabilities of IOT around the data and the ability to extract that data.
This will help an enterprise gain the clarity it needs to customise its actions, enabling it to expand into new revenue streams and to ensure that the data is appropriate and relevant. And can use data to fine-tune how it engages with its customers, whether it is business-to-business or the end user.
A clear outcome
To deliver real business value, the enterprise has to place IOT hand-in-hand with big data and analytics and develop a robust and agile ecosystem that is tied into measurable business outcomes.
There is a significant role that technology providers play in introducing innovation and collaboration, creating solutions that bring the IOT ecosystem together. However, innovation needs direction and the business has to be specific as to what it wants to achieve as it moves deeper into the realm of IOT.
Some outcomes are, of course, standard across business and sector: cost reduction, richer business insights, improved safety standards and health, compliance with environmental factors, but others are industry and enterprise-specific.
Any implementation requires that there be an awareness of the nuances that shade each vertical, sector and customer, and understand how it can resolve specific challenges using technology intelligently.
If a business recognises the problems it faces, then IOT opens up a vast landscape of solutions that can be targeted to address them. IOT does not solve one problem for all business eventualities.
Understanding the data points
If data is the new oil and IOT the machinery that creates and extracts it, to continue the analogy, it requires the refinery to process it.
The algorithms and technology applied to the data have to be very focused on the outcomes. Even customer experience is a very nuanced outcome that has to be both industry and company-specific.
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