IoT Ecosystem

Need Enterprise IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation
admin
December 20, 2022
Digital Transformation, IoT

Why do We Need Enterprise IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation?

We all are well aware of the changes brought by digital transformation, or we can say that digital transformation has achieved many advancements in the past few years. However, the primary question remains: Why do we need Digital transformation? The answer is that to stay competitive, businesses must adopt digitalization. It is mandatory to maintain the minimal digital standard. So, the question should be changed to What are the benefits offered by digitalization to the company?

Let’s assume that company is already leveraging the benefits offered by digitalization. But not everyone can implement or execute it seamlessly, especially considering the highly structured nature and operations in the difficult-to-reach area, increased safety requirements, and a small room for risk.

These challenges are commonplace in sectors like construction, agriculture, and mining. Luckily, the technologies backing digitalization are regularly upgrading to provide the most suitable combination of digital solutions for successful digital transformation. Let’s know how companies can start or continue digitalization using enterprise IoT solutions without the hassle.

Why go Digital?

Digital transformation has not been limited to desktop computers. The level of digitalization in a company can be estimated by the digitalization of its assets, usage, and labor. Product companies must enhance their products using digitalization, for example, by customizing thermometers or developing an agricultural product range with a digital irrigation system. 

According to recent statistics, almost 70% of companies embrace and have a digital transformation strategy or perform on it. These organizations represent the following reasons why digitalization can be advantageous for them:

  • Top Benefits of Adopting a Digital Model

Top Benefits of Adopting a Digital Model (Source: IoTForAll)

It is apparent that many of these factors are interdependent or outcomes of the same digital improvements. For example, by replacing the old-traditioned button-operated interface with the sensor interface in a tabletop printer, a company could boost its final product quality, which naturally impacted operational efficiency. Therefore, having a clear goal is vital for a potent digital strategy. A more thorough approach means a more valuable outcome. This is true for production and enterprise process improvement, as digital enterprise processes can enhance performance while IoT can speed up adoption.

Business IoT Solutions & Digital Transformation:

These four core target components give a holistic look at the digital enterprise of today:

  • Automation
  • Efficiency
  • Security
  • Maintenance

IoT-embracing companies are already familiar with the benefits and vital points of the IoT ecosystem development strategy. IoT adoption is considered one of a company’s digital indicators. However, it is more reasonable to consider IoT as a tool for enterprise organizations for transformation. This approach empowers to counter any inflated expectations, for instance, executing IoT components and expecting the company’s revenue to skyrocket. It is necessary to ensure that each tool is used appropriately and strategically.

Digital Strategies: 

An IoT implementation process is more intricate than various digital strategies. This is why we call it an IoT ecosystem, where all the components, from sensors to people, communicate with each other to achieve the primary business goals. Besides their extensive nature, IoT ecosystems are adaptable and permit companies to enforce them irrespective of their digital level.

Therefore, we suggest Enterprise IoT solutions for these two main digital strategies:

  • Initial digitalization: By creating an IoT ecosystem, businesses become digitized. By integrating crucial equipment, assets, vehicles, or cargo into intelligence, one can get real-time status, monitor environmental conditions, people’s activities, track location, etc. By adding analytical tools to the IoT ecosystem, one can predict equipment failure, create optimal routes or detect failure due to human factors. One can even add a cybersecurity program due to the potential vulnerability of the endpoints.
  • Advanced digitalization: Besides the capacity to deliver the vector for further business development, Enterprise IoT Solutions are best to estimate the other vector for the digital development of a company. For instance, if you execute a machine vision for improving QA processes at the first step, it is easy to track its efficiency and pick up complementary solutions. When all the essential assets are implanted with IoT sensors, companies can implement a digital twin and meticulously investigate data in their ecosystems. Therefore, you can get a solid analytical advantage empowering you to predict trends or simulate cases.

Enterprise IoT Challenges & Solutions

To know how to accelerate transformation, we must comprehend what slows down this process. Let’s know the major digital problems and solutions to overwhelming them.

1. Inventions Can Cause Disruptions:

Adding innovations brings a change in working models. This is true for highly structured sectors like mining, rail, and construction. Thus, they should regard digital solutions with structure in mind. The best benefit is that IoT technologies are flexible and can incrementally.

Now, we are familiar with successful cases of how some traditionally unsuccessful industries in digital have soared there in recent years. For example, in 2015, healthcare was one of the least digitized industries. But the story changed within three years, and in 2018, it became one of the top digital business strategy adopters, along with the financial and service sectors. Telemedicine, smart pharmacy, wearables, and smart hospitals have become part of the world; this shows that the healthcare sector is successfully managing the enterprise IoT adoption and will keep embracing it.

2. Lack of Safety:

If an enterprise IoT integration is technically challenging, the organization should spend more time on marketing research. The statistics are open, and enterprise IoT providers are updating their technical tools to outstretch the potential implementation area. In mining operations, which are usually held in vast and remote areas and have less connectivity, the best and most convenient solution is implementing mesh nets to ensure a reliable IoT ecosystem. As a result, one can monitor the entire area and get to know the health status of the machines.

3. Resistance:

Line workers are less resistant to innovation. Top management is typically the most resistant as they are responsible for the business. It is the only right decision to approach innovations efficiently by calculating all pros and cons. 

Therefore, higher-level leaders should get precise reports on how particular Enterprise IoT solutions will impact the business processes and revenue of the company. While making an execution strategy, it is essential to calculate all the situations, risks, and ROI and intercommunicate accurate statistics. Thus, there is a high possibility that a technology important for a specific enterprise will be backed.

IoT Ecosystem for Business Goals

Taking the IoT ecosystem not as an end goal but as an effective instrument to achieve business goals using digital transformation is more beneficial. Organizations’ main objectives are improving operational efficiency, meeting customer expectations, and enhancing new product quality. By enforcing enterprise IoT solutions, it is easy to get real-time insights. Enterprise IoT solution is compatible with initial and advanced digitalization as they can analyze large volume of data.

Read More
How is IoT Helping The Procurement Team in Improving Productivity
admin
May 13, 2022
Artificial Intelligence, IoT

How is IoT Helping The Procurement Team in Improving Productivity?

Today, almost every device is connected; whether it is your smartwatch, air conditioner, or television, we can say it’s a world where devices are more connected than people. No, doubt these connected gadgets present around us make our lives easier by working systematically. This is possible because of the most popular concept known as the Internet of Things, which can also influence the procurement team.

IoT, a.k.a Internet of Things, can be defined as a network of interconnected computing devices, either mechanical or digital machines. This technology allows transferring data without human-to-human interaction or human-to-computer interaction. Communication is possible using networks and cloud-based systems.

An IoT ecosystem includes web-enabled smart devices that collect, send and work on data collected from their surroundings utilizing embedded systems such as CPUs, sensors, and communication hardware.

IoT devices can exchange sensor data stored in the cloud for analysis purposes or examined locally by interlinking to an IoT gateway or other edge devices.

Besides this, these gadgets can connect with other related devices and respond according to the information they receive from one another. Even individuals can operate the devices for the beginning setup, give instructions, or recover data; the device can perform most of the tasks without human interference.

The Role of IoT in Procurement

Procurement is an important part of the business. It demands the implementation of new technologies to boost productivity, enhance customer service and save costs. As of now, the procurement process is also embracing automation; IoT in this process is one of the most exclusive things happening in the era of digital transformation.

The inclusion of the Internet of Things will provide greater spending visibility and understanding of the supply and equipment used for the procurement process. So, with a proper understanding of what is being used and the requirement specified, the procurement team will have access to optimize catalogs and manage expenditure. Forecasting demands more closely using analytics can significantly improve budget and contract management. This also helps in improving budget and contract management. Despite this, the data generated through IoT sensors and other devices can assist in making informed decisions.

Let’s know how IoT works in procurement.

Traceability of Materials:

A study done by a McKinsey Global Institute shows that by the end of 2025, the Internet of Things’ possible contributions to inventory management, logistics, and supply chain management would reach 560 billion to $850 billion per year. This shows the possible IoT-oriented future awaiting us. Most of the time, IoT contributes to these sections by tracking. IoT sensors can help in making inventory management systems more effective.

For instance, RFID tags connected with IoT devices can track physical inventories and eliminates the need to scan barcodes or labels. In fact, businesses with vast inventory can track the days before items expire using interlinked IoT devices, saving the business from huge losses. IoT also prevents product theft by enabling businesses to know the location of their products.

With the use of machine learning, procurement teams can manage products per demand.

Supply Chain Visibility:

In this process, the procurement team can also potentially use IoT technology. Supply chain visibility, items are documented as transported from the manufacturer to the customer. An IoT-enabled system can read data from various devices like smart tags and sensory data like surrounding temperature and humidity, vehicle speed, and geolocation and accordingly follow the supply chain when connected to it.

The adoption of IoT devices to track inventory and route planning provides the details about where and when items are delayed in transportation. This allows emergency planning and identification of other options to accelerate the supply chain.

Stock Management:

Along with smart shelves and storage bins that inform about the stock levels in real-time and how long the product has been on the shelf, IoT also assists in detecting the pattern of consumption.

For instance, if a product named X is on shelf A and has been the quickest utilized item, IoT sensors will monitor the usage rate and suggest its economic order quantity (EOQ).

This clears how essential procuring an item is, which products are needed, and what amount. Procuring the right inventory quantity reduces costs by lowering waste and the menace of shortage.

Monitor and Alert Maintenance:

The sudden breakdown of equipment in a production unit is the most horrifying dream as it disrupts the business. If the condition of the equipment is not known, things become more difficult and result into process disturbance, indefinite downtime, and even business loss. Regular monitoring of the equipment’s condition through IoT sensors permits the team to watch indicators like vibration, oil, temperature, and performance.

When these indicators go out of range, the sensor alerts the team via computers.

In fact, smart sensors also alert when a machine’s working pattern changes or is about to fail. So this allows teams to schedule the maintenance, decrease the chances of sudden machine failure, and ensure seamless productivity.

Better Decision Making With Predictive Data Analytics:

Procurement teams can predict the future using predictive data analytics and spend analytics. These predictions assist in making critical decisions for designing and executing business techniques. Continous flow and accumulation of data with IoT devices also help create more robust and relevant historical data.

Infact, joining IoT data with additional data coming from other sources can boost business growth.

For example, knowing what quantity of a product is needed can help send accurate requisitions for approvals and create error-free purchase orders.

For example, having information on what quantity of a product is being used can help in sending accurate requisitions for approvals and generating error-free purchase orders. This results in an efficient and effective purchase management system. Data collected by IoT can also be used for onboarding suppliers with supplier management solutions to get new products based on previous performance metrics and set criteria.

IoT Procurement Takeaway:

The Internet of Things has become a sensation and is impacting almost every industry. So, it will be smart to invest in this technology and unheave the existing business model.

The procurement team requires a comprehensive IoT framework consisting of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and embedded technologies. These technologies, all together, can bring holistic change and offer maximum benefit.

Read More