Browse by year

June - 2015 issue

Connecting Managing and Engaging in IoT

By Vignesh.A

Though many case studies on are fast emerging on the benefits of IoT, research shows that close to 50 per cent of the enterprises have not defined a clear mobility strategy of any form. It is a known fact that every CIO today has already started working on strengthening or conceptualizing a better mobility strategy through testing the current mobile experience of the brand in question, deploying analytics and through competitor & customer analysis.

However it is possible to note driving expectations for the IoT market: the ability to improve customer experience and relationship management through conceptualizing intelligent services informed by insight from collated data. The possibilities for businesses that utilize IoT to the hilt range from actions such as fault detection, consumable replenishment, servicing, and product enhancement to actionable intelligence, cross-selling and up-selling, among a host of others. To deal with IoT in a strategic manner, CIOs need to view IoT in three stages, i.e to connect, manage and engage data.

Connecting is more than just about linking devices to the internet. Devices should be interconnected with a range of software and hardware to allow collected data to be collated and managed on key business systems, hence leading to enhanced business value. The connections made then need to be adaptable to how the business wants to manage its devices and the information from the same source. Therefore it is vital to have an agile infrastructure that provides quick, simple and secure connections that are scalable.

However agile the infrastructure is, if the collected data is not managed effectively, the whole process is meaningless. For example, IoT product data management could include the interactions between the device manufacturer and its customer via detailed feature usage statistics. This includes collating the data and integrating it with existing business sources, such as CRM and ERP.

The final piece of the puzzle is engagement with the customer. What if a company was able to remotely access and diagnoses a customer’s connected device without needing the customer to ship a faulty device back to the warehouse? With the IoT, business can engage with their customers on a closer, deeper level in order to deliver more reliable and compelling products and services. This greatly improves the customer experience, boosting their satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Vignesh Anantharaj
Managing Editor
vignesh@cioreview.in