Excellence in Software Engineering
BLOG | IoT
Business of Things to Compete in the IoT Universe
15 September 2021

Author: İsmail EL – SW Architect / Enterprise Applications Group

As the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes ubiquitous, companies have recently concentrated on how to succeed in competing in the compelling universe of IoT. Accordingly, companies have recently fixed their attention on the next generation of connected intelligent devices that will digitally transform not only the high-tech industry itself, but also others. As a global company, ICterra is aware of the issues facing evolution in the high-tech industry required to thrive. ICterra differs by providing integrated innovative solutions, long-lasting unique customer experience and optimized global operations.

Just a couple of inventions have influenced the world as in depth as electricity and internet have done that they played such a fundamental role in the 20th century by opening the way to reorganize the life of the world no sooner than they gained economies of scale and became commercially available. That is, the commodification of those ones brought into existence numerous industries and businesses that would otherwise be undreamed. Likewise, IoT – still in its infancy – is on the eve of any other enormous, evolutionary opportunity.

IoT is making it enabled for companies to go far beyond simply selling technology. Delivering compelling experiences across industries over the life of delivered technologies is the one which refers to new Business of Things. As is the ordinary course of business, the world will have been once again reorganized by IoT so long as the technological industry pervasively expands and new ecosystems emerge.

On the other hand, we are in an era of billions of connected intelligent devices but yet many companies are at a very early stage of their IoT strategic planning and thus a various number of challenges including but not limited to growing investments, high expectations and uncertain return on investment (ROI) must be addressed elaborately. Here you can find some insights as prescription that can guide companies in developing their IoT strategies and business models so as to improve and strengthen their engagement in the Business of Things.

 

The Things of IoT

Considering the longevity to build long lasting customer relationships, companies need to take notice of continuously changing trends in product ownership and management models as well as their impact on business models throughout the life of sold technologies.

First, the things in the IoT become cognitively more intelligent and much more capable of adapting to end-user needs via user models and user interfaces with a high degree of context that considerably simplifies the end user experience no matter to what extent it is complex and increases the core value of the delivered technology as well. Furthermore, they are most likely to act as agents, helping companies gain new insights from end user behavior.

Second, when considered revenue models, ownership is likely to become superseded soon by alternate acquisition models. Payment in return for the experience of temporarily accessing products rather than having them owned has become much more prevalent. Also, IoT-based digital tracking decreases the risk in lending, facilitating the high-value asset leasing while making their utilization and economic value increased.

Third, in consideration of operating models, IoT enables the distribution of large capital investments to revenue-generating activities as well as operational expenses that offers the potential to decrease overall risk as distribution of investment shifts as well.

Finally, the changing trends in delivery channels imply that companies must extend their strategic focus beyond solely selling connected intelligent products and new services so as to provide compelling experience over the life of a product.

 

Over the course of Complexity in the IoT Universe

Almost all kinds of industry – including but not limited to healthcare, energy and utilities, defence, automotive, telecommunication, insurance, retail – are being reshaped by IoT, that makes it much more complex and heterogeneous not anymore than before. Simultaneously, the expansion in the boundaries of industries brings along the countless new requirements to support multiple ecosystems. Collectively, those aforementioned forces are driving the need for next generation platforms that can manage this sort of complexity by orchestrating devices and services in collaboration across multiple ecosystems smoothly.

Things in the IoT can not be regarded as separate entities anymore. The technology is experiencing its biggest change, as almost all passive single item turns into an active device and hence a point of experience. To be able to successfully provide this value, it is becoming significantly important to figure out in what way the products and solutions enabled by the new technologies will be in interaction in the IoT ecosystem.

The exponential rise in the amount of connected devices will mostly require invisibility in machine-to-machine interactions, as well as much more simplicity and intuition in machine-to-human interactions that all essentially require the evolution of natural language processing and cognitive systems. Synchronically, cognitive intelligence of devices is evolving from descriptive and predictive capabilities into more sophisticated interaction.

When considered expanding boundaries of IoT, industries are being challenged against addressing the needs of different regions, setting a various sort of use-cases, and enabling a well-rounded customization as well as sophisticated personnels. additionally, each industry is struggling against difficulties and obstacles in its own set of platforms, processes, protocols, operating systems and compliance standards and so on. In addition to those aforementioned ones, supporting

Handle complexity in the IoT Universe

those adjacent industries’ ecosystems in addition to its own one is any other big challenge, that has yielded an explosion of extra requirements on the industries.

The various permutations of ecosystems (e.g., mobility, comfort, safety, health, management, entertainment, etc.)  and industries (e.g., automotive, healthcare, insurance, retail, defence, telecommunications, etc.) that electronics devices have to support are making interoperability (i.e., for electronics products to interact) the biggest challenge emerged to IoT adoption.

Open, extendible cross-industry platforms are required so as to discern and accommodate high levels of complexity. Additionally, the experience platforms enable the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized experiences across end-user journeys by means of integrated and cohesive piece of technologies. That is, they are able to bridge the gap among devices and services across vertical applications so that they can exceedingly help manage the complexity of the IoT and increase the consumer adoption. Furthermore, open platforms giving virtual support to any device in any ecosystem at any kind of industry provide chance for companies to play active roles in the markets of other industries, be the center of attraction for new customers and therewith create new revenue opportunities.

On the other hand, besides interoperability, security stands out as the next challenge to be met in the IoT adoption. Strategic alliances and associations push the “state of the art” among member companies and serve as an area to come together for common requirements, government regulation and local standards, but seems to be still insufficient for contributing to smooth co-operation of IoT technologies through the complexity of IoT universe.

 

New Agenda of Business

As the IoT ecosystem continues to expand, companies – even the most well-known ones – are embracing new identities. When we speak of implementing IoT strategy at the point of brand reinvention, aligning organizations becomes an even bigger challenge in comparison to the technology related challenges that necessarily requires radical changes in the way companies lead, train and manage their staff since IoT permeates organizations through an extended Chief Technology Officer (CTO) mission.

Clearly State your Company’s Role

The journey to achieve success over the competing IoT challenges begins with identifying the company’s main role in the IoT, including but not limited to evaluating the distinctive core competencies and environmental opportunities to differentiate. Developing the right skills while developing an innovative culture that creates non-stop follows next.

Start off with a Clean IoT Mission

Also critical to building a successful IoT organization, having an expanded CTO mission plays an important role in bridging the gaps among diverse organizational functions and making technology and operations unified in unparagoned ways, that require both co-ownership of technology development and putting it on the market.

Make Workforce Well-Prepared

The need for building new skills for design, development, sales, marketing, delivery as well as support over the lifetime of smart products is the reality. As well, IoT impacts the employment by creating high-skilled jobs and therewith changes the way of learning, acquiring skills and training.

Identify Organizational Culture

Since the rapidly changing IoT environment establishes a destructive competition, companies must necessarily act with a start-up agility and continuously create innovative solutions by gathering experience in a close interaction with end-users so as to achieve success.

Boost Creativity and Speed up Innovation

As IoT makes the companies differentiated, rethinking traditional risk models and embracing outside-in perspective with resilience to failure will be necessarily needed to accelerate innovation for creative value delivered to the customers.

Re-Evaluate the Success

As companies embrace new identities, continuously monitoring success and re-evaluating the company’s position in the IoT universe will be crucial to stay competitive. Rather than standard enterprise metrics, prescriptive ways of measuring will emerge so as to improve real-time performance of the business.

Past Articles

IS THE “SMART HOME” DEAD?

IS THE “SMART HOME” DEAD?

Likely, most people who are interested in subjects within the scope of IoT have an awareness of its applications in Smart Home.

Navigation