If you were to look inside of an IoT solution you’d see connectivity endpoints, feeds from countless devices and strings of bidirectional data moving from thing to thing. Similarly, if you want to create a successful IoT enterprise implementation, the initial idea should originate from a highly connected internal organization.
In fact, in a survey conducted by Cisco of 1,845 IT decision-makers, team collaboration was identified as the number one factor for IoT project success. Fifty-four percent of respondents agreed.
There’s more than one pathway to IoT success. Projects are frequently led by product development managers, innovation leads or the C-suite; but, successful IoT implementations are not silo operations, they begin with collaboration between a number of departments to encompass the goals of a larger digital business model. In our experience, corporate goals to improve customer experiences lead to collaborative ideas where a number of departments contribute to and benefit from the results of the data as well.
Finding Opportunities in Your Organization
As outlined in our guide to digital transformation we encourage our clients to begin IoT implementations with a problem that needs to be solved, either within the organization or for their customers. As you build your internal team, consider the individuals with the most visibility to problems who can contribute to the solutions. There may actually be a number of people in your organization from unlikely sources who can influence a winning IoT strategy.
Here are a few sources of information you may not have already considered:
- The customer service representative trusted enough to manage high-priority accounts will have a bank of knowledge.
- The HVAC technician keen on the recurring problems with the building’s legacy system will know precisely which components should be monitored.
- The field technician responsible for opening up generators in remote locations to diagnose problems will know which models to begin with.
- The controls engineer your shop depends on to keep the line up and running can likely contribute to solutions.
- The security guard who has been on the job for years, aware of where the gaps are in coverage, probably already has an idea of how technology could improve the operation.
Consider how much information a customer service rep or call center associate absorbs in a day. If your organization has a customer service department, those interacting directly with customers are well aware of common pain points, other ways to solve the customers’ problems, and will likely have ideas to improve your business’ product or service. Before building a solution to gather data using IoT, it is important to know how your organization will use the data in a way that benefits the entire organization.
Rounding Out the Complete IoT Team
As an idea moves forward it is also critical to pull in external experts from the IoT ecosystem. We define the IoT ecosystem or the IoT landscape, as the network of IoT suppliers (hardware, devices, software platforms, sensors, connectivity, software, systems integrators, data scientists, data analytics) whose combined services help enterprises create complete IoT solutions. Losant is an easy-to-use application enablement platform which helps customers quickly and securely build IoT solutions. By maintaining a partner network, we are able to recommend and help our clients select the right combination of IoT experts so enterprises can develop solutions quickly and securely. Are you ready to get started? Even if you are only in the initial stages of info gathering and discovery, talk to one of our experts today.