What the future holds for IoT

If you don’t already know the ben­e­fits of the inter­net of things (IoT) for busi­ness then it’s high time you found out because your com­peti­tors already will. IoT is a key ele­ment of the Fourth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, often referred to as Indus­try 4.0, and as we end 2020, it is clear the land­scape has changed so much in a year. 

Accord­ing to Microsoft­’s 2020 IoT Sig­nals report, 91 per cent of the glob­al IoT deci­sion-mak­ers researchers spoke to have adopt­ed IoT in 2020, up from 85 per cent last year. Nine in ten believe IoT is crit­i­cal to their com­pa­ny’s con­tin­ued suc­cess and 64 per cent plan to imple­ment it even more in the future.

The impact of coro­n­avirus has been stark in pro­pelling the indus­try for­ward, some say by years, with one in three (31 per cent) stat­ing their organ­i­sa­tions will increase invest­ment in IoT due to the pan­dem­ic, twice the num­ber that will decrease it. A fur­ther 41 per cent will main­tain the same com­mit­ment.

So, what exact­ly are the ben­e­fits of IoT for busi­ness? They are numer­ous, large­ly due to its abil­i­ty to col­lect, analyse and send data in sec­onds. Out­comes range from the abil­i­ty to enhance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pro­duc­tion through automa­tion, to using net­works of inter­con­nect­ed sen­sors for greater vis­i­bil­i­ty, clar­i­ty and secu­ri­ty of the sup­ply chain.

All indus­tries can, and will, ben­e­fit but it is with­in health­care and man­u­fac­tur­ing that IoT came into its own this year. Smart track­ing and con­nect­ed devices helped employ­ees keep their dis­tance, while remote mon­i­tor­ing of machin­ery was used fre­quent­ly when staff were unable to be on site due to fac­to­ry clo­sures.

Col­in Crow, man­ag­ing direc­tor of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion spe­cial­ist Sig­ma Dynam­ics, says: “IoT tech­nol­o­gy has been used to reduce the risk to employ­ees while also ensur­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy remain as high as pos­si­ble, cru­cial in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate.”

Global IoT models increasing productivity

Accord­ing to the Microsoft report, France, Ger­many, Chi­na and the Unit­ed States have the high­est per­cent­ages of IoT adopters cur­rent­ly; 83 per cent of adopters have at least one project that has reached the use stage, up from 74 per cent last year.

It is cit­ed as being instru­men­tal in increas­ing yield, with near­ly half (46 per cent) report­ing increased pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty and 44 per cent sig­nalling cost-sav­ings. Qual­i­ty and safe­ty were oth­er named ben­e­fits of IoT for busi­ness.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to The Future in 2020 sur­vey from BT: “UK plc risks falling behind oth­er devel­oped nations because com­pa­nies are not embrac­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al tech­nolo­gies.” The sur­vey of 1,000 busi­ness lead­ers found just one in five said IoT exist­ed with­in their organ­i­sa­tion.

There does seem to be a divide, how­ev­er, because among large busi­ness­es this was 28 per cent, per­haps demon­strat­ing small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es lag behind when it comes to see­ing the ben­e­fits of IoT. Nonethe­less, just 19 per cent of respon­dents over­all believed IoT tech­nolo­gies would be crit­i­cal in the next five years in enabling their busi­ness to achieve its ambi­tions and stay com­pet­i­tive.

For Mar­tin Gar­ner, chief oper­a­tions offi­cer at CCS Insight, iden­ti­fy­ing these comes down to focus­ing on the busi­ness out­comes of IoT first and devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy based on that. He says: “It is essen­tial to focus on busi­ness out­comes with IoT. No one buys ‘IoT’. Instead they buy a sys­tem that helps them improve, opti­mise or change some part of their busi­ness. IoT is just a part of the sys­tem, which helps to col­lect the right data.

“Although IoT sys­tems can involve lots of dif­fer­ent data types, brought togeth­er in quite a com­pli­cat­ed sys­tem archi­tec­ture, the sys­tem will be of no use if it’s not usable by peo­ple in the busi­ness doing their dai­ly jobs. It is essen­tial to keep a focus on the user, their work­flows, the way data is pre­sent­ed to them, how they make deci­sions using that data, whether those deci­sions can be auto­mat­ed and how out­comes of the deci­sions are fed back into the sys­tem.”

IoT development and solutions are a smart investment

With the ben­e­fits of IoT for busi­ness now felt across indus­tries as wide and var­ied as auto­mo­tive to build­ing man­age­ment, retail to min­ing and ship­ping to util­i­ties, invest­ment in these tech­nolo­gies looks like­ly to soar.

Daniel Bai­ley, invest­ment man­ag­er at ECI Part­ners, a pri­vate equi­ty firm, says: “The mar­ket for IoT is excit­ing. It’s large and grow­ing rapid­ly, dri­ven by reduc­ing data costs, improv­ing under­ly­ing tech­nolo­gies, such as 5G, and the ever-increas­ing viable use-cas­es for con­nect­ing ‘things’. The ben­e­fits of this to busi­ness­es are far reach­ing, any­thing from ensur­ing con­struc­tion reg­u­la­tions are com­plied with to track­ing cows across a farm.”

A new glob­al study from Juniper Research also sig­nals a bright future with the num­ber of indus­tri­al IoT con­nec­tions pre­dict­ed to increase from 17.7 bil­lion in 2020 to 36.8 bil­lion in 2025, fuelled by smart man­u­fac­tur­ing.

How­ev­er look­ing ahead to 2021, Paul Haimes, vice pres­i­dent of Euro­pean tech­ni­cal sales at indus­tri­al IoT plat­form PTC, says: “If I hope for one thing it is that these adop­tions of tech­nolo­gies have a bet­ter uptake in the small and medi­um-sized busi­ness space. That’s real­ly impor­tant for the recov­ery and health of our man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try.”

And he adds some­thing all lead­ers may wish to con­sid­er: “IoT, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty, blockchain or cloud, what­ev­er it might be, all can offer a solu­tion to the typ­i­cal chal­lenges fac­ing busi­ness­es. The core start­ing point is the busi­ness plan. What are you try­ing to do, what does your com­pa­ny need to do and then how can dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies impact and sup­port this?”