Almost anything we do today creates data, thanks to the rise of technological advancements in almost all fields. For instance, you can wear a smartwatch and have it track your heart rate and the number of steps you take. Smartphones can show your location when you turn on the GPS locator. Sites such as The Pirate Bay allow you to access your favorite movies, content, and information from anywhere in the world within minutes. Your phone knows your hobbies and what you want to buy.
All these developments are merging into a system called the IoT (Internet of Things). They aim to benefit everyone from consumers to businesses, as they help you in your daily activities and remain connected to important things. Businesses can benefit too, as IoT helps to improve efficient operations, monitor processes, and gives you fresh insights instead of leaving you to assume the causes behind everything happening in your enterprise.
It is worth noting that projections show the IoT market may grow to at least $600 billion in the next two years. These IoT elements include telecoms services, data storage, systems integration, software, and hardware – and more companies are adopting these elements in their regular business operations. In light of this, it is important to consider how IoT can help your business grow and adapt to changes, as well as how it is transforming other enterprises.
How the IoT (Internet of Things) is changing business operations
Enhances customer experience and business insights
Since many industries are connecting their equipment, this is leading to more analytics and data stream analysis. The result is businesses getting better insights into their operations and how consumers use their services and products.
The increasing use of cloud platforms is a major factor behind this, mostly from vendors like Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM, and AWS. Additionally, some industries are gradually shifting to edge computing solutions through relying on third-party data centers to reduce latency and other drawbacks.
The more you understand your customers and how they use your product or service, the more you can satisfy their needs and enhance their experience, leading to more business growth. You can see this growth, particularly in the retail industry, as platforms such as Amazon thrive on IoT to understand people who shop on their website and reduce friction for the consumer.
Reduced downtime and costs
A major advantage that IoT usage promotes is reduced downtimes and operational costs. A good example is the rise of digital twin technology, which involves using real-time data to make digital models of physical assets.
This eliminates the risk of spending hours trying to solve downtimes, especially when the cause is a minor mistake that is affecting an entire system. Using IoT in the form of digital twins allows you to spot possible problems faster and fix them in a brief moment, which eliminates the costs of system downtime and operations. This can also benefit other sectors like manufacturing, energy, and supply chains, as well as many more.
Increases gains in productivity and efficiency
You can easily spot opportunities to increase efficiency by connecting the key processes in your business. The principle is useful when you are identifying issues like bottlenecks, even though they may seem small – because leaving them unsolved is a recipe in making them slow down your overall efficiency.
Reduces wastage and promotes asset tracking
IoT tracking is very important when you want to reduce waste as well as increase productivity and efficiency. An example of this is the phone manufacturing sector, where you can implement IoT solutions to track assets and boost efficiency during the manufacturing and sales stages.
The implementation of IoT can also help in improving customer satisfaction and making more efficient business models. As a general guideline, you can always benefit the most from IoT if you have numerous components in your business operation. This is the reason behind the supply chain sector being the biggest adopters of IoT.
Adoption of new business models
Although most IoT adoptions are for process monitoring, productivity, and efficiency, there is a growing number of enterprises to get more information on their customers. You will get major benefits if you integrate it successfully into your products while ensuring it benefits your customers.
The benefits we have mentioned are some of those you stand to get when integrating IoT in your business, and this will unlock greater revenue streams and new competitive advantages.