Axeda Connexion 2014 is a who’s-who of enterprises and technology companies that have embraced or are learning how to embrace the connected future. The key themes from this year’s show span business/strategy and technology characteristics of IoT. Let’s take a look at some of the top ones.
Impact of IoT solutions on business process. No doubt that IoT solutions pack all sorts of value for enterprises, but oftentimes we overlook the challenges that enterprises have in re-designing their business processes to take advantage of connectivity, connected devices, sensors and the richness of the data provided by these IoT solutions. Business processes touching all aspects of operations, finance, marketing, sales, customer support and product development can be impacted by new IoT solutions. Enterprises must prepare for these changes — changes that impact technology, but also human factors within the enterprises. As such, it is critical that enterprises create appropriate change management and training plans. In addition, they need to address additional security and compliance issues that might be impacted by changes in particular business processes. These changes impact large enterprises as well as small/medium businesses that march down the IoT path.
Moving enterprises from product to services companies: striving for competitive differentiation. An age-old adage for many businesses is, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” But those enterprises that adopt IoT solutions realize that there is something that needs improvement. Sometimes identifying those problems and taking the risks to change require great foresight and executive commitment. Many enterprises that are product-centric recognize the difficulties in creating a sustainable competitive advantage solely based on a product-only business model. So in order to help differentiate their products, these enterprises are adding connectivity to their products and becoming hybrid product/services companies. These changes help diversify the overall revenue characteristics of these firms while building competitive differentiation through enhanced customer loyalty, difficult to replicate product/service offerings and reducing the time-to-market for new service solutions.
Innovative technology solutions being deployed today: enterprise examples. There is tremendous diversity in the types of IoT solutions being deployed today. A quick perusal of attendees and speakers at the Axeda Connexion 2014 event attest to this fact. There are hundreds of enterprise attendees from sectors including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, automotive/transport, software, distribution and others. The IoT solutions vary from those that have been generally available in markets for years — like, fleet management — to those that are in beta-stage today — like several healthcare solutions in various stages of medical testing. As we expected there was strong presence of IoT solutions in the industrial sector — the industrial sector being one of the hottest IoT sectors in 2014 according to recent MachNation research. There is a heightened focus on the quality and useability of the data collected from these IoT solutions, recognizing that collection and analysis of data must lead to actions that seek to improve business outcomes.
Application integrations: To reach the goal of extracting maximum value from IoT solutions requires careful integration of enterprise business applications — like CRM/SFA, ERP, inventory management, accounting/finance, distribution systems and other — to IoT platforms like the Axeda Machine Cloud. Very few enterprises are implementing IoT solutions as green-field deployments. Most enterprises have existing business applications that require integration with IoT applications and application platforms. Simple approaches and careful project planning are required to ensure data is mapped and shared appropriately between applications. Look to cloud application vendors like Axeda and Salesforce.com that are creating deep business and technology partnerships to ensure the success if these integrations.
Axeda Connexion 2014 continues to attract some of the most progressive enterprises and technology vendors that have embraced the connected future. Check out the Axeda blog for more information.