The top three lessons from successful IoT projects

In the previous blog we’ve outlined how digitization and deployment of so called ‘Digital Twins’ can contribute to reducing the shortage of technical workers. In a broader perspective, we see more and more companies position IoT as one of the key pillars of their digitization strategy. In this blog we analyze three key aspects of successful IoT implementations.

Although a lot has been written about the potential value of adopting IoT, many companies are still struggling with deploying these type of solutions at scale. Next to challenges associated with technology, we also review organizational factors that are important for successful adoption of IoT at scale.

1. Determine the owner of IoT

It is often unclear who the owner is of IoT within a company. The multidisciplinary nature of IoT projects requires a clear owner who is able to understand the impact that a new way of working will have on the different departments and internal and external stakeholders.

A way of structuring this ownership can be achieved by assigning owners to IoT value chains. They are responsible for the way IoT data moves through the different departments. A value chain owner is responsible for setting up and structuring the collaboration between internal and external departments and/or stakeholders.

2. Prepare for scale and focus on interoperability

Due to technological developments, it is becoming increasingly easy to experiment with both hard- and software. When carrying out these experiments it is important to do so in a setting that can easily be scaled. This can help avoid that successful IoT pilots or projects get stuck in what is known as ‘pilot purgatory’.

The same applies to interoperability, a big challenge in many large IoT implementations is the challenge or inability to combine data and insights from different systems. Interoperability should be a key consideration for all decisions related to the deployment of hard- and software.

3. Change the entire organization

Implementing IoT is often seen as an individual project, mostly led by the IT department. Frequently there is not enough attention for redefining business processes or sometimes an entire business model. It also important to re-evaluate how performance or results are measured and adjust these where needed to a new way of working.

To get the most out of IoT, it is important to break through existing silos and allow the entire organization to be involved in the intended changes.

The importance of data literacy

There are different ways we see companies handle changing the entire organization. A promising and upcoming approach to this are programs related to data literacy or data democratization.

Through workshops, hackathons and training programs they work with all departments to gain a better understanding of the possibilities that working in a more data-driven way can bring. As IoT impacts the entire organization, increased data literacy will significantly contribute to the successful adoption of IoT.

Advanced data literacy: use your engineers as data analysts

In a next blog we will look into a few real-life examples of the potential of IoT in programs where Low Code is used to increase a company’s data literacy. We will show the results these companies achieved by providing their entire company an easy and accessible way to working with data. This goes beyond visualizations or basic data interpretations but also includes the ability to manipulate data. This is an important ingredient to allow people to gain insights from the data that will help them increase the efficiency of their daily work.

Cheers,
The Blockbax Team.