IoT solutions

Smart and Sustainable Livestock Management supported by IoT

IoT-Enabled Livestock Management: A Smart and Sustainable Approach

Food is a basic need for every living being, and the importance of the agriculture industry and livestock farming cannot be underrated. The demand for food, rabbit and poultry meat, has been increasing day by day, and the reason behind this increase is population growth, changing diets, and affordability. This has led to an increase in the number of poultry and rabbit farms worldwide and improved the sensitivity toward animal welfare issues.

Many farm owners have adopted standardized farming management practices to meet the growing meat demands. Many others have added new technologies and innovations like smart farming methods using the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine solutions in their livestock management process.

Adopting the latest farming technology, smart sensors, and livestock monitoring solutions can assist farmers in efficiently managing their resources and enhancing productivity. This adoption also guarantees minimum wastage and less energy consumption.

Value Proposition

Traditional methods of livestock management include inspecting each animal for signs of injury and diseases. Farm owners with large livestock farms often fail to detect ill cattle and face loss. This monitoring method is time-consuming, labor-intensive, costly, and highly erratic.

As per research conducted by Oklahoma University, lung lesions and scarring are found in 37 percent of cattle that had never been diagnosed as sick, and in a trial at the Meat Animal Research Center found that 68% of steers tested showed signs of past respiratory infection.

Although the animals can recover independently, studies show that once cattle have been ill, they cannot catch up to the rest of the healthy herd in health or value.

IoT Data for Livestock Houses and Management

Farmers can optimize their processes, improve animal welfare, enhance traceability, and increase overall productivity by adopting IoT technology offering real-time data on environmental aspects like temperature, gas levels, and humidity.

Such IoT solutions are constructive for monitoring ammonia levels, which causes severe eye irritations and respiratory problems in animals and humans as well. By keeping these aspects under control, farmers can improve their cattle’s health and well-being and enhance the final product’s quality.

Enhanced Farming Practices

Using low-cost and durable smart sensors in an IoT solution for farming is an efficient and cost-effective way to gather and analyze data. The IoT sensors can be implanted in different locations around the livestock houses to gather data on different aspects like temperature, humidity, water quality, gas levels, and many other things.

The sensors can also be installed to gather data in real-time, guaranteeing that the farmer has access to real-time information about their farm’s current status, environment, and operations.

The consolidated and easy-to-install feature of the sensors makes them a feasible option for farmers who wishes to speed up their farming practices without disrupting their procedures. The advanced battery-backed system guarantees that sensors are durable, skipping the frequent battery replacement and maintenance requirements.

IoT Platforms for Livestock Houses

The gathered data is then processed and analyzed using an IoT platform, which can provide insights and actionable suggestions to the farmer. The information can be accessed using mobile devices, authorizing the farmer to monitor their farm from any location at any time. The data provided is in an easy-to-understand format means farmers do not need specialized technical knowledge to understand and utilize the information.

What are the Benefits of IoT-Enabled Livestock Management?

  • Monitor the health and vitality of livestock in real-time, allowing farmers to immediately treat animals and prevent the spread of illness or disease.
  • Track grazing animals to know their grazing patterns and activities and prevent loss. 
  • Collect and analyze past data to identify and understand trends in cattle health or track the spread of illness.
  • Monitor the heat period or birth time, avoiding the loss of new calves and optimizing breeding practices.

Revolutionizing the Farming Industry to Boost Productivity

The success of IoT in reducing disease and mortality rates in livestock houses, increasing output, and optimizing overall operations shows its potential for enhancing farming practices.

The data gathered using the sensors can be utilized to determine the pattern and make informed decisions to enhance productivity, lower costs, and guarantee animal welfare.

Overall, employing IoT technology in farming is the most futuristic approach to overcome the food crisis and counter the increasing demands of a growing population. It has the potential to revolutionize the industry and address some of the challenges encountered by farmers, like limited resources, growing demand, climate change, etc.

We all are very well aware of the significant issue of this era: climate change. The changing climate is hammering productivity and leading to the food crisis. On the other hand, the uncontrollably growing population is amplifying the issue. The only possible way to control both major issues is to adopt the most potent solution that can resolve both issues hand in hand. The adoption of IoT in farming is the most extensive way to overcome both challenges. Not only in farming, but IoT can also be used to control carbon emissions and contribute to slowing down the rapidly changing climate. IoT also helps provide a better lifestyle by offering smart houses, cities, buildings, hospitals, and the list goes so on.

How IoT Data Analytics Impact your business

What is the Impact of IoT Data Analytics on your Business?

Today, if we observe the trend and business processes, we can express that IoT solutions are changing the way of doing business globally. However, saying that all solutions provide equal benefits would be wrong. We can say that an IoT solution that shares data without analytics is like a symphony playing Mozart without a conductor. This means music is there but with no structure and loses its purpose, beauty, and meaning. We all know that there will be immense flooding of data by IoT, but the absence of a process to properly analyze the data would just cause complexity and noise without proper output.

The Impact of Data Analytics on businesses

Data is compelling and empowers by giving insights into all aspects of the business. It can assist organizations in refining processes, locating missing physical assets for cost saving, or even helping in defining new use cases for already available products. 

In the absence of data, a company can be just reactive or can assume future challenges and results. 

With the data offered by an IoT solution, a company can anticipate the emerging problem before it becomes complicated and resolve it as soon as possible. However, there are IoT data solutions that only offer the data and no other context to make it meaningful. In such cases, IoT analytics comes in as a savior. 

The capability to interpret the data before it comes in front of the user is compelling. For instance, data analytics can help alert a factory manager about the floor problem in real-time instead of waiting and then reading through reports on issues that have already happened. This can reduce time consumption and the possibility of errors. 

Analysis software is available in many forms, from one-size-fits-all products to low-code/no-code solutions to solutions that demand an experienced engineering team to execute and maintain.

Each type of solution has benefits and expenses, and your enterprise must determine the best-fitting solution to get the maximum benefit.

Well-known IoT Data Analytics Solutions

We all are aware that technologies like AWS IoT Analytics, on the one hand, are sophisticated and powerful but, on the other hand, very complicated to execute and demand a highly skilled engineering team having domain expertise. The advantages of the analytics solutions are- it offers customization. Everything needed in your business and unnecessary things to be left out. You can consider AWS IoT products like building blocks: you can get maximum from them, but they demand a lot of planning along with maintenance and oversight.

All businesses cannot afford or consider hiring an expert engineering team to execute these solutions. These businesses are inclined toward adopting a one-size-fits-all solution like Azure provides IoT Central

Azure even provides a solution analogous to AWS, but they are more successful in an out-of-the-box strategy. The straightforward analytics provided by this solution or any other one-sized solution can fulfill the requirements of many businesses. They enable businesses to connect promptly and design their dashboards and alerts within a few days or hours. If your business just needs simple alerting or has a limited number of devices to connect, then opting for this solution would be a great idea and cost-saving as well.

Customizable Solutions

The main challenge with the IoT data analytics solutions mentioned above is that they don’t provide customization options, are costly to scale, and might compel your team to do analytics using a third-party tool (which is no doubt another pricey option). Suppose you own a business having specific analytic requirements and many devices to be connected. In that case, a low-code/no-code solution, like the one proposed by Leverege (running on Google Cloud), could be a terrific middle-ground solution. This type of solution is customizable per the business’s requirement and, in parallel, does not need any technical expertise if it offers an end-to-end alternative and has analytics and an excellent alerting system, even without needing a dedicated and proficient engineering team. 

Irrespective of whatever solution you choose for a business to implement, ensure that a third-party tool to be integrated gives you maximum flexibility and value from the data. Tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Looker can be the best option to support your company in familiarly visualizing your data. If your company has already made a preferred analytics tool list, then it will enable your users to harness their expertise of that tool with new data sources.

Valuable Insights

Till now, hope that you have understood the importance and contribution of Analytics tools. It is essential to obtain the optimum value from IoT solutions irrespective of the products the business chooses. Neglecting these core capabilities may take your business to the loss side as it may miss valuable insights and maximize value. We can simply infer that IoT solutions, no doubt, enhance business operations but remain incomplete.

Data analytics gives direction and beauty to the solutions as it analyzes the data and offers favorable data to businesses to boost operations and amplify outcomes. Today, most companies are embracing the Internet of Things but are unaware of the importance of data analytics and ignore it. They face losses and then switch back to their old processes and operations. Therefore using IoT and offered IoT solutions must be opted for after attaining full knowledge.

Today, IoT is making its space in almost every sector, from smart homes to smart buildings, from smart towns to smart cities, and from smart farming to smart logistics; one can see the influence of IoT in every sector.

Similarly, data analytics is also contributing from its end to add more value to every solution offered by the Internet of Things. For instance, in the baking process, the availability of raw ingredients is insufficient, and it does not come together without a recipe. The recipe brings ingredients together in a beautiful way and offers the best. So, if you are still untouched by the magic of data analytics, then you might be losing a lot of benefits and leverages offered by it.

How will Smart Farming decide the Future of Agriculture

How will Smart Farming decide the Future of Agriculture?

Today, farmers are facing more pressure than ever before. Demand for food is growing as the population increases, whereas agricultural land is used for urbanization. Not just this, the challenges caused by climate change are also decreasing the yield. Sometimes drought, sometimes flood, and unseasonal rain impact the total yearly yield, ultimately causing a shortage of food. 

In the coming years, agricultural enterprises must operate in new and adapted ways to achieve sustainability and the capability to survive. The latest and most advanced technologies, falling under the roof of  Smart Farming, provide opportunities for farmers to overcome unprecedented challenges while passing the agricultural way of life to future generations. This has led to a boost in the yield along with the profit. 

Unfortunately, local farms, including some in the world’s most fertile lands, are also declining today. Therefore, creating a viable business is becoming challenging, and farmers must find ways to work more smartly instead of shedding sweat in the field. 

Historically, agricultural structures demand immense amounts of time, money, and effort to order, unload, store, plant, monitor, cultivate, and harvest crops. 

Advanced smart farming technologies provide new methods to simplify the workflow and enhance operations, leading to robust businesses.

IoT’s Shining Agricultural Future

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the soul of this transformation process. Intelligent sensors are implanted throughout a farm that behaves like the eyes and ears of the farmers. It collects information about crops, the equipment’s condition, and performance. One of IoT technology’s most crucial characteristics is its ability to expand visibility to new endpoints. IoT empowers farmers with real-time monitoring and analytics systems through which they gain more insights into their operations and the capability to handle them more efficiently.

Let’s know some of the ways through which smart farming improves agricultural enterprises and will continue to do so in coming years:

1: Monitoring Crop Growth

IoT in the agriculture industry acts like a superhero; it assists farmers in improving the crop’s quality and the land’s fertility. Sensors integrated with IoT systems collect nutrient density information, allowing farmers to adjust the amount of fertilizer to be used. If any symptoms of infestation are observed, using pesticides can eliminate the invasion. In actuality, data-driven agriculture always empowers farmers because the information received permits adjusting activities imaging the current conditions, handling the crop cycle more effectively, achieving efficiency, and enhancing crop growth.

2: Improving Greenhouse Operations

Greenhouse IoT sensors improve visibility and automate traditional manual functions, making the entire process more efficient and automated. They gather and transfer real-time data, like air pressure, humidity, temperature, soil conditions, and light levels. In fact, water consumption can be managed with SMS or email alerts if any defects occur. In modified systems, adjustments are made automatically. The processes turn out to be more cost-effective and accurate, and operational performance improves.

3: Tracking Water consumption

Agricultural IoT supports farmers in monitoring water tank levels in real time by tracking the amount of water being used and the amount of water left in the tank. Smartphones provide intuitive reports that analyze trends and make recommendations in many cases. Farmers can alter water usage as needed, making irrigation more efficient and economical.

Predictive Equipment Maintenance

Farmers can monitor their land, vehicles, and other assets through IoT. Farmers wish to reduce downtime as the equipment is essential to daily operations. It offers a clear view of the device’s performance, which updates as the equipment operates. Advanced data analytics provides them with the required management insights. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning measure an asset’s typical efficiency and wear and tear based on metrics like vibration analysis, oil analysis, and thermal imaging.  

Predictive maintenance models depend on complicated algorithms to determine when an asset must be serviced, fixed, or retired. These insights come before the device stops performing. This assures that operations and processes at farms are continuous and seamless. The other advantages include lengthened machinery lifecycles, reduced downtime, and productive outcomes.

Smart Livestock Management

We all know that livestock management and monitoring demand good quality of time, effort, and money. Traditionally, employees are hired on farms to look after the health or injury of the cattle. The process is undoubtedly costly, highly unreliable, and inefficient.

IoT solutions terminate speculation when diagnosing an animal’s health by monitoring temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. The information is sent through the wireless network to an application in real time.

Farmers can then access the mentioned information using mobile devices:

  • Each animal’s health condition and location in its herds can be checked from anywhere at any time.
  • Farmers can also check the peak mating time and season of the cattle.
  • Farmers receive alerts if a metric falls outside of the normal range.
  • Most suitable gazing spots can be easily determined.

Benefits to Agriculture and Personalized Services

By embracing smart farming technology, farmers can develop more suitable approaches, and this proficiency changes the relationship between customers and retailers. The farmers can emphasize consumers’ interest in sustainability and eco-friendly food while focusing on creating new strands of their products. They can then charge a premium for their products, enhance revenue and create a more substantial business.

Smart sensors automatically observe every facet of everyday agricultural work. This advanced technology allows farmers to automate real-time data collection, boost production volumes, cut down costs, reduce waste, and much more things that increase productivity. These many advantages are compelling farmers to spend on technology.

According to the worldwide smart farming review, investment in this field will increase from $3.715 billion in 2022 to $7.040 billion in 2026, a CAGR of 13.65 percent. It means farmers will have added hundreds of millions of IoT sensors to improve their everyday operations.

Steering Efficiency

Smart farming technology provides businesses with new ways to increase agricultural efficiency, reducing costs and boosting revenue. In other words, smart farming technology is most significant for the growth of modern farming, increasing the yield to meet growing demand and will keep agricultural industries viable in the future.

Need Enterprise IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation

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 (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.

How IoT Boosts the Micro Mobility Market

How IoT Boosts the Micro Mobility Market?

The Internet of Things is no new thing in the tech market. Just look around, and you’ll find that most of the gadgets and comfort offering solutions are connected to IoT. One of the most popular and known solutions is your virtual assistant,” Alexa.” The way that device handles other internet-connected devices in our homes is incalculable. But limiting the character and usefulness to just these things would be unfair. IoT is also immensely used in logistics, manufacturing, industrial automation, and many others. Not just this, IoT is also being used in the micro-mobility sector.

Any idea about micro-mobility?

The word micro-mobility directs to lightweight transportation for individuals. It shields different transportation options that weigh less than 500kg (1200 lbs). 

Some examples are electric scooters, bicycles, e-bikes, segways, electric skateboards, etc. Micro-mobility is very different from vehicles that are used for long distances. It focuses on short distances and generally for less than five miles. There are considerable advantages to the micro-mobility market, which is the reason behind the huge investment made by tech giants. In 2020 investment in the micro-mobility market was $800 million. This scenario rocketed after the lockdown restrictions were removed. The micro-mobility brands drew around $2.9 billion in 2021.

Advantages of the Micro-mobility Market: 

Let us know three specific benefits of the micro-mobility market that support these high investments:

1: Convenience

One of the most popular and justified benefits is convenience. Transportation options can help customers reach their destination early and with comfort.

2: No Parking Issues:

Parking is one of the major issues in big cities, but micro-mobility can solve this problem. You will never again face parking issues by using micro-mobility transportation choices like segways and hoverboards.

3: Cost-Effective:

As micro-mobility involves ride-sharing, it will automatically become cost-effective; you can rent without requiring any license for hoverboards or e-bikes.

Challenges Faced by the Micro Mobility Sector

The idea of micro-mobility appears appealing, but some challenges hinder the growth of businesses. However, there is zero to be upset about as long as IoT exists, as it has the potential to advance the micro-mobility market.

Data Sharing:

Suppose your own a firm that has 100 ebikes throughout the city. People take your ebikes but pay less attention to the charging levels, and why would they? They are your service bikes, and it’s your responsibility to take care of them. Well, not just this, there are many other issues like ending the ride midway, navigation issues, leaving the vehicle anywhere, and overriding the ebike that can cause damage and revenue loss.

Therefore, there is a need for a solution to collect all the necessary data about the vehicle from time to time. With IoT-connected devices like highly sensitive sensors, one can quickly get all the data related to the vehicle for analysis and make informative decisions. Moreover, adding IoT sensors will also make it manageable for you to transfer data with the traffic authorities to watch vehicle activity in a good way.

Riding Behavior:

It is pretty noticeable to see people riding aggressively on the road. This can be inspired because of different reasons like road rage or time-saving. However, no reason justifies the purpose as it can distract or put other’s life at risk. With IoT sensors installed on the vehicles, businesses can check the vehicle status and warn the rider by sending messages.

For instance, if a person is riding at high speed or cutting the lane often, sensors can record the data and share it with the related authorities for further action. This can protect vehicles from damage and save companies from getting banned due to abnormal riding behavior.

Safety:

Whether a car or a scooter, safety remains the top priority for micro-mobility service provider companies. It is essential to integrate features that protect the riders. These added features are not just limited to safety but also allow businesses to meet government requirements to secure their business.

Theft and Vandalism:

A micro-mobility company’s worst loss is when a vehicle is damaged or lost. Therefore, it is necessary to install proper security measures to prevent this from happening, and yes, IoT can help with this. By implanting a few IoT sensors, companies can stop stealing ebikes. Additionally, these sensors can also be connected to other systems to initiate warning messages.

If it is a genuine user, they can use their phone to get an OTP and use the ebike. Further, the vehicle can have environment-mapping sensors to prevent vandalism.

Scaling Service:

IoT can help in business scaling, but the critical challenge with IoT is that one needs to modify the complete system to upscale instead of a single one. The most feasible option is to get the most suitable IoT service providers. A single service provider will promise smooth and seamless scaling as the operator would have knowledge of your business operations.

Compliance:

Compliance with government standards and norms can hinder growth as they may change and be difficult to follow. However, if state-of-the-art IoT solutions back you, they can become more accessible. IoT sensors can be employed to keep riders stay within speed limits. It can guarantee that vehicle is parked at the right spot. In fact, smart sensors can also guide the riders to the nearest charging station. These criteria also guarantee that riders do the right thing and that government norms are obeyed.

IoT and Micro-mobility

IoT can support the upheaving micro-mobility market, but the only condition is that this will demand colossal investment. Once an investment is made, all other systems are managed, and only timely maintenance and upgrade is left. Investment in IoT for the micro-mobility sector promises a better future and benefits, and various tech giants like Uber and many others are forwarding toward it. This shows that micro-mobility holds a great scope in the coming years. It not just brings transportation at ease but also promises its contribution towards the environment by reducing the dependency on crude oils. The integration of micro-mobility with IoT makes it safe and futuristic.

How IoT Is Modifying the Service Industry

How IoT is Modifying the Service Industry

Internet of Things is one of the booming technology that has occupied an important place in the industrial sector and has become part of other futuristic development plans. Today, if you observe your surroundings, you might realize that things are updating and becoming smart. The real-time data shared by the equipment involved in this innovative technology has revolutionized every industry. The real-time data offered are ideal for encountering the challenges of service providers, either its restaurants to automotive shops, or it is a pet grooming shop. 

The topmost issue among other challenges is the growing expectations of the customers. Today customers are looking for fast and consistent service. As per the recent survey conducted, approximately 70 per cent of respondents opted for fast shipping as a decisive factor for online purchases. Now, here fast means immediate, with the same-day delivery market to increase at a rate of over 20 per cent through 2027. However, the expectation of customers is not just limited to e-commerce. Suppose the service provider fails in meeting the timeline of a client. In that case, they will switch to someone else- may be to somewhere that’s already embracing IoT solutions for a better customer experience. IoT offers a plethora of options that can address service challenges, including predictive maintenance, asset tracking, and advanced process automation. But the most significant benefit that IoT drags into service industries come from one capability: service tracking. 

Service Tracking with IoT Solutions:

Service tracking itself defines its meaning, i.e. real-time monitoring of the progress of a task; it can be anything, whether haircut or machine maintenance. An IoT solution empowers you with this visibility automatically. Here’s how IoT services can help in tracking works:

  • Multi low-cost sensors keep a watch on the ongoing task and monitors progress indicators. These are the assets of IoT, sensors implanted in equipment or posted at a distance, like cameras or RF devices. They are known as edge devices, and they accumulate data at the point of work.
  • Internet connectivity sends the data. Edge devices gather processed data but to share the same, they require wireless connectivity. It can be a dedicated narrowband IoT network or 5G network, or even Bluetooth.
  • A cloud-based data managing platform: Observational data stocks into a centralized platform on the cloud. Over there, it is converted into meaningful insight. For instance, if you run an oil change service, cameras installed in your workplace can send a video to the data platform, where software identifies a car rolling out of the bay. This indicates that an oil change process is completed.
  • Front-end software application offers human touchpoints. The final stage of IoT service tracking is sharing data with stakeholders. We can say that it means a branded app that updates your customers with real-time estimates—for example, informing customers that your car will be ready to take in 10 minutes. It can also include a reporting dashboard that helps you point process improvements.

We all know that every IoT Implementation is unique, and this is just like a small picture. It may surprise you that service providers need to pay attention to IoT as it provides extraordinary advantages for service companies.

How is IoT Service Tracking changing the outlook of Service Providers and their Customers?

Service tracking with IoT solutions charters a path to unlimited benefits. Ones who are already embracing IoT in service industries are enjoying the results. Lets us know how IoT service tracking is changing the vision of service industries:

  • Reduced wait times: When tracking your services can be done digitally, and precisely then entire scheduling operation becomes much less wasteful. You skip the best-guess estimates. You are aware of current processes and when the next guest room will be available because the system tracks the ongoing housekeeping processes. An automated system informs the customer about the availability of the room, mentioning the exact time. This type of predictive wait time eliminates frustration and improves customer service.
  • The involvement of an IoT service tracker ensures better operational efficiency. Service tracking saves customers time along with yours. With more efficient scheduling created using IoT solutions, you can see more clients and improve efficiency and profitability. Process data also shares the bottlenecks for workflow optimization. Above all, this allows you to improve productivity, leading to lower prices and providing a sharper competitive edge.
  • The inclusion of an IoT service tracker creates an excellent customer experience. The addition of IoT brings terrific customer experience, which is the key to growth in the service industry. Line-free service, progress updates and cost-saving without negating the quality allures customers to come back again.

No doubt, service tracking is just not a way through which IoT benefits service providers. IoT provides other services like asset tracking for goods and equipment. Sensors installed in core equipment can track the uses to establish a more accurate preventative maintenance. They can even share data with machine learning models to facilitate predictive maintenance.

IoT is one of the fast-growing technology, so there is more on the horizon. It holds everything that can improve services, draw benefits and save time.

How is IoT Renovating Hotel and Hospitality Industry into Smart Ones?

IoT is already making so many industries and sectors smart and successful. No doubt, organizations are also embracing this new technology. Hospitality is another industry that devours the benefits of IoT by integrating it with internal management, and the output is more than expected.

We all know that housekeeping and maintenance have been the most critical components of smart hotel management. It is essential to keep a place running smoothly while maintaining quality, as it can affect the guests’ experience. When everything is done accurately, guests may not even notice that maintenance or housekeeping is being performed. In fact, issues are resolved before any guest sees it, or if someone notices it, requests are addresses immediately and seamlessly.

When things are not done as expected, it might go downhill much promptly- guests might complain, ask for recourse or write a negative review which ultimately causes business drop and no repeat business as well.

Thus, it is clear that the housekeeping and maintenance model matching guests’ needs and hotel management is challenging. Compromising quality and thoroughness by spending too little on housekeeping and maintenance may lead to guest dissatisfaction. Or spending too much on maintenance and housekeeping may result in appreciation, but you may feel that you’re spending more than the requirements.

So now, the most significant challenge is to know how to strike the proper perspective smart hotel?

Present Systems for Core Hospitality Functions and its disabilities:

Well, before switching to Smart Hotel, it is necessary to understand the state of current operations. To understand this, you need to ask few questions about housekeeping services like “How many rooms are cleaned every day or weekly? How much time is consumed in cleaning, and how many staff are engaged in it? How many rooms are allotted to a single staff and how assignments are made?

You even need to question on maintenance front, too, like “how often maintenance requests are made? What are the things which need frequent repair? How much is spent on maintenance?” It would be best to determine how often preventative maintenance is performed and how much it stops more significant issues from emerging down the line?
These small but essential questions are challenging to answer as these issues can be resolved only by employing the right system or process.

Many organizations discovered that their systems are:

Manual and Variable:

Apart from housekeeping and maintenance being hands-on and physical work, recordkeeping has also been manual. Every input must be made manually from room allotment to service requests, thus dragging the possibility of errors and sometimes ambiguity.

Disintegrated:

Even if the software is part of hotel management, there are separate systems for each function that troubles to find out who’s doing what or what happened at what time. The process for housekeeping can be different from the maintenance procedure. Sometimes, a system for maintenance requests is varied depending on the type of service or vendor.

Responsive:

We all know that most maintenance systems are dependent on submitting service orders to acknowledge or resolve things that are already broken. This results in a system that reacts to the emerging problems rather than one that actively works to fix them before it happens.

These different and manual systems have been part of the industry for a long time despite having limitations. Now, there are many firms and companies that offer software to digitize and collect housekeeping and maintenance operations. Yet, these solutions are still dependent on some level of human interference. Whether recording time spent completing a particular task or determining if something needs servicing indicates the degree of unpredictability and difference in the data as long as you do not have a smart hotel.

Monitor Smart Hotel Functions in Real-Time and Get Actionable Insights

The Internet of Things empowers hospitality industry professionals to view the current status of essential services like maintenance and housekeeping in entirely new dimensions, analyze past data in a centralized form and utilize data to extract actionable insights to improve the business.

Let us know the benefits of employing IoT based housekeeping and maintenance solutions.

Set Alerts for Dynamic Maintenance

Leak sensors on water lines and bathroom fixtures, vibration sensors on HVAC appliances and airflow sensors in ducts can be helpful. These sensors provide alert when things are damaged or broken, and it can even identify problems before it turns into a big issue. These sensors can be installed on an individual room basis or in common utility areas to get alerts. One can set a limit for moisture, airflow or vibration to get alerts to perform preventive maintenance or promptly address the arising situation accordingly. With sufficient available data, some IoT solutions use machine learning or artificial intelligence to execute complex models for predictive maintenance.

Better Staffing and Resource Planning

Attaching proximity sensors and indoor positioning beacons to either housekeeping staff uniforms or carts can provide data on rooms cleaned at any given time. As staff move from one room to another, these sensors capture the data of time spent by the staff in cleaning a room without manual reporting. By getting zone and room level data, hotel management can know the current state of rooms- cleaned or have to be cleaned. Occupancy sensors installed in rooms can inform staff with a real-time indication of which room to skip to avoid the requirement for repeated manual follow-ups. Collecting and analyzing past housekeeping data can help pinpoint operational bottlenecks to notify total staff headcount and cut housekeeping costs.

Enhanced Guest Experience

Interactive tablets are added in rooms for the comfort of guests to place room service orders like request extra towels or mark their room as ‘Do Not Disturb.’ When these sensors are integrated with housekeeping and maintenance data in a centralized system, front desk employees get access to the real-time dashboard of every room’s status, enabling them to respond to requests and send the required personnel. This ultimately results in an improved service experience where services are prompt and seamless to visitors.

Analytics and Administration Monitoring

Data collected from housekeeping, maintenance and guest service requests can be utilized to bring about reports and metrics like average cleaning time consumed per room, maintenance requests made per week, or average request fulfilment time. Sensors attached to HVAC appliances can be utilized to monitor energy usage and optimize it in response.

Thus organizations are aware of metrics that can be deployed for suitable operational changes.

Different Sensors, Networks, and Software to Meet Your Needs

Sensors used in an IoT solution will depend on the particular demands of the Smart Hospitality use case. For example, to track housekeeping activities through indoor positioning, current hardware technology consists of WiFi tracking tags, BLE beacons, or RFID tags. For maintenance purpose, leak sensors, there is ultrasonic-based and mechanical impeller leak sensors. Vibration sensor technologies comprise piezoelectric and MEMS-based accelerometers.

In Smart Hotel network connectivity, sensors can cooperate with the cloud through a variety of wired and wireless protocols, like

  • WiFi or Ethernet
  • LoRa and other LPWAN protocols
  • Cellular (NB-IoT, LTE-M)

In the end, you’ll need an IoT software platform to ingest, convert, and envision the data. This may also comprise the skill to connect or remove sensors to various appliances and assets, set alerts and create customized reports.

Thus we can conclude that IoT supports hospitality organizations to stay ahead of the curve in the guest experience and streamline operations.

How is IoT Transforming the Retail Business?

How is IoT (Internet Of Things) Transforming the Retail Business?

Today, almost all industries are utilizing the benefits offered by the Internet of Things. One of the biggest markets affecting the industry, i.e. retail industry, is also encountering an exciting transformation with innovative IoT applications.

Retailers and marketers are enjoying unlimited opportunities with IoT applications to collect and produce more intense insights into customer response and purchasing patterns.

IoT applications aids retailers in increasing productivity, sales and enhances the overall customer experience. Such benefits have improved the image of IoT and made it a centre of attraction among retailers across the globe.

Marketers and businesses expect the revenue of IoT in retail to stretch around 35.5 billion USD by the end of 2025. Today retailers can use IoT technology in their business in different ways to get the most optimal result.

How IoT helps retailers in improving business?

Nowadays, retailers are adopting IoT to enhance customer experience, reduce costs, drive growth and enhance overall performance. Let’s see how IoT supports retailers in improving business.

Smart Shelves:

In a retail business, it has been observed that a considerable amount of time and energy is spent in keeping track of items, i.e. to confirm the availability of a product and know the condition of the product. Using smart shelves is a better solution to end the hassle. IoT technology in retail helps automate monitoring products and reduces the possibility of any possible vandalism.

Retailers attach sensors and RFID tags on the shelves to monitor the products and gather the data. The readers have to scan products on both display shelves and stock shelves.

IoT enabled smart shelve informs the retailer about when items are incorrectly placed on the shelf or running low. It helps to control the management of inventory in a precise and cost-effective way. The RFID tags are attached to a reader that gives the smart shelves the capability to identify in-store thefts. Hence, it cuts off the extra expenditure spend on security personnel.

Automated Checkouts:

Most of the time, store’s checkout counters are the busiest place holding lines of customers for their turn to pay the bills. IoT technology has solutions for this issue as well. It resolves the issue effectively by establishing a system that can read tags on each item when customers leave the store.

The checkout system matches the items with RFID tags and automatically deduct the cost from the customer’s mobile payment application. The automated checkout system improves the customer experience and increases the probability of their revisit to the store for next shopping.

Personalized Discounts:

Loyal customers expect some privileges like personal discounts or rewards for their loyalty. One of the best ways to meet their expectation is setting up sensors that send loyalty discounts to loyal customers when they reach the specific products with their smartphones.

Another way is to adopt IoT to monitor those items that the customer has been searching online and send a personalized discount when the item is available in-store. Through engaging offers Internet of Things can surprise the customers and sustain their loyalty.

Thus adding IoT into a daily business needs foresightedness and creativity. The innovative and smart approach attracts more valuable and long-term customers.

In-Store Layout Optimization:

By Implementing analytics on the data collected using infrared sensors, the store’s layout can be optimized by placing the products at their appropriate place. Also, placing the popular products at the front and least liked at the back can offer a comfortable way to customers to reach the desired item.

Suppose a customer is searching for a popular Smart TV in-store, but it is placed behind an old DVD player’s stock; thus, it is blocking the way to the TV. This inconvenience might result in losing a potential customer. Therefore, in-store layout optimization plays a vital role in a retail business.

The use of IoT applications helps a customer find and locate their desired products in-store, help find the best route to reach their selected items, and check the details of the product provided by the smart shelves.

Optimized Supply Chain Management:

The RFID tags and GPS sensors attached to each product provides precise data about the products’ condition like temperature, humidity, time spent in transportation, and other product-related factors. When the collected data is processed and analyzed to gain insights, it can improve transport and the overall supply chain. In addition, IoT sensors alert the person in charge in case of any emergency and enable them to take necessary actions immediately to avoid substantial loss.

Conclusion:

Internet of Things is transforming the outlook of the retail industry by implementing smart solutions. The adoption of IoT solutions in the retail business can help in improving customer experience, reduce operational costs, improves inventory management and high-quality services.

By extracting valuable insights through IoT and Data analytics, retailers can manage and schedule their operations, including inventory management, supply chain, boost marketing conversions, and ROIs. Thus these features will attract retailers to adopt IoT into their businesses in the upcoming year to enhance their benefits.

How Emerging Technologies Support IoT

How Emerging Technologies Support IoT?

Today, IoT technology is flourishing with full potential globally and is getting embraced by a wide range of industries and organizations. These industries are striving hard to achieve IoT’s complete potential-more insights, efficiency and excellent productivity.

The emerging technologies are bringing digital and physical worlds closer and have now become essential because IoT solutions are becoming part of new applications and environment. The utilization of these emerging technologies to enhance the abilities of IoT solution is just not a trend but the market demand. It also generates real-world results.

Businesses incorporating advanced technologies are enjoying more benefits from IoT deployment, resulting in more investment in IoT solutions in their organizations. Microsoft IoT Signal report shares that IoT adoption has been continued to grow from 2019, rising from 85 per cent of companies using the technology to 91 per cent. Furthermore, 95 per cent of institutions expect to use IoT potentially in the coming years.

What are the increasing Capabilities of Emerging Technologies?

Today most organizations are already familiar with emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence, edge computing, and digital twins are already integral parts of their solutions as they facilitate solutions to work both online and offline while adding more analytic and predicting power and producing benefits by linking digital and physical domains together.

For example, Digital twins technology grants users to test the effects of changes to a system, process, or physical structure before implementing them in the real-world system or format. Not just this, this technology also enables users to manage the systems of a structure/model or equipment remotely by adopting a 3D digital model, whether you’re overseeing a single building or an entire structure.

On the other hand, Edge computing provides less latency time, offers real-time processing and analysis of massive data workloads. It also provides security, convenience and cuts down the storage costs of IoT data.

By migrating cloud databases, analytics and custom business logic to edge devices, organizations can concentrate more on business insights instead of spending time on data management and security in the cloud.

Meanwhile, Artificial intelligence adds more skills like analyzing vast amounts of information and images, machine learning, understanding speech, making predictions, and providing automated decisions. These features combine to optimize the productivity of IoT solutions.

Innovative edge modules and intelligent cloud systems develop systems that can understand their environment, learn, and adjust to maximize operations.

Strengthening Existing Solutions

Emerging technologies contribute to accelerating their RoI (Return on Investment) while automating or providing remote control and monitoring of assets. Since the COVID-19 has hit the world, the adoption of IoT technology for the purpose of remote monitoring and other related tasks has increased. The pandemic has limited on-site work and restricted staffing at offices or production plants, and other facilities.

Many building owners ( property owners in New York) use IoT solutions to handle the Covid-19 situation and ensure the health of its tenant. For examples, The company uses the solution to improve the health and safety of its tenants. The company integrated new safety measures for the tenants when buildings were reopened for business during the COVID-19 pandemic. It created and deployed an innovative, secure, scalable remote monitoring solution. The developed solution uses physical and digital assets, including Azure Digital Twins, to keep tenants safe and informed via apps, the cloud and on-site devices such as no-touch thermal sensors to detect fevers and social distancing detectors.

In the same way, the logistics business is also leveraging the benefits provided by IoT solutions. They are using IoT Solutions to inform their customers about their freight in real-time at any place. The logistic companies use integrated Intel-developed sensors and Intel Connected logistics platform technology with Azure IoT Central to run a system that can provide real-time shipment insights to employees and customers to ensure that their goods reach customers on time in healthy condition. The information shared includes the location and other vital necessary related aspects like temperature, humidity and shock during transit while ensuring security.

Building Strong Deployments

Successful integration and adoption of IoT in an organization can be measured on the basis of cost as well as production efficiency and reliability, improved quality and security. Integrating emerging technologies with IoT solution can enhance intelligent cloud or offline with intelligent edge computing. Besides this, innovations in hardware such as a growing option of lightning fast-processor or plug-and-play IoT enabled devices, field-programmable gate arrays and video processing units to handle specialized workloads in new or retrofitted IoT solutions. IoT is providing a plethora of options for different industries to enhance their productivity and efficiency. The combination of IoT with other advanced technologies is opening ‘n’ number of opportunities to make better tomorrow.

Prompt Softech, an IoT based company, is providing highly advanced IoT solutions to improve the efficiency and productivity of the organization. They have IoT enabled solution for the logistic industry to track the real-time location of the vehicle and provide other essential data like weather etc. Prompt has also developed an IoT-based security system for homes and organizations. There are many other smart solutions that are developed by the Softech Company to improve the working process of companies.

IoT-Enabled Smart Collar to Improve Cattle Management

The present COVID-19 situation has gripped the crowd-culture and demands for the minimalist culture, which means the least human-interaction, the more safety assurance. Corona-virus has limited the gathering at everyplace, either its an office or a shopping mall. In this situation, it has become a more challenging task for a rancher to keep a track on every cattle with least number of helpers.

Earlier, in the presence of labours, it was not easy to keep a track on a large herd because cattle management includes a lot more than you think. The day usually consists of feeding, cleaning, vaccination, health monitoring and anytime heat stress, anytime artificial insemination requirement and anytime calving. Farmers have to be all-time available to run a successful cattle farm.

Today, the Internet of Things has made many jobs easy in different sections. The need for time and the existing loopholes in cattle management has led to the innovation of IoT-enabled collars. The smart collar is the outcome of the collaboration of advanced technologies.

The IoT-based and cloud-connected collars monitor rumination, movement, activities, body temperature of the cattle. It collects the data and stores it on the cloud for analysis of pattern and behaviour.

How smart collar helps you in managing cattle remotely?

The GPS enabled cattle tracking collar provides the real-time location of your cattle. The collar sends the signal every 15 minutes at your livestock management dashboard. This process allows you to track the movement and location of your cattle at any time from anywhere. The IoT-enabled collar collects and stores the data on the cloud for future purposes. Farmers even install specific geofences and alerts to get the notification if cattle move out of a designated area.

If you own a large farm, then it would have become a more difficult task in this pandemic situation with less number of helper. Maintaining a record of each cattle becomes an arduous task. A bit of careless attitude might end up into a loss of 3,000-3,500 bucks per missed heat per animal. The sensor-enabled smart collar helps you to skip from all the undesired loss.

How IoT-enabled smart collar works?

  1. The smart wearable catches the movement and records the data. It predicts the estrus based on the change in behaviour, movement and activity pattern.
  2. The IoT-enable collar compares the daily activity of cattle and notifies if any change in pattern appears.
  3. The smart collar also compares the movement of each cow with the heard and alerts if any change shows.
  4. The IoT-enabled collar detects the patterns which only appears at the time of estrus and inform promptly.

Read More: Why is IoT Impossible Without an Open Ecosystem?

Smart collar curtails the undesired losses:

The reproduction cycle of a cow is very critical. For instance, missing the single heat stress of a cow can disturb a whole reproduction cycle and cause considerable loss. Suppose, if a farmer misses the heat stress many times or faces failure in artificial insemination, then, this situation might turn out to the worst result.

Therefore, this new data storing wearable tag eases the management work by notifying about the peak heat-stress period.

Usually, cattle management solutions include smart collars, receiver unit and antenna.

  1. It offers remote tracking of cattle and informs about its current location.
  2. It records and stores ambient temperature, rumination profile, cattle movements on the cloud.
  3. It alerts for oestrus period and animal health.
  4. It sends a timely alert for general health, lameness, oestrus, digestive health etc.

Reasons to have an IoT-enabled cattle management system:

The most straightforward reason is to minimize the loss of cattle, maintain good health and yield benefit. The other reasons are:

  • Cattle management solution can monitor ‘n’ number of cows.
  • It stores data and allows farmers to access it anytime from anywhere.
  • It reduces dependability on labour.
  • It provides a highly accurate result.
  • It alerts farmers if any cow is ill or lost.

Undeniable Advantages:

The inclusion of a cattle management solution can help farmers in all aspects. It improves farm management, increases the breeder’s efficiency and optimizes the input costs like labour, hormonal treatment, semen etc.

It lowers the dependency on human resources and assures for no human error. Farmers can access the data and can edit it as per the existing situation. The solution also helps the farmer in tracking and recovering stolen cows.

Conclusion:

The introduction of smart cattle management has solved the problem of poor breeding performance. The IoT-based cattle management solution is economical, robust and user-friendly. It has confirmed a positive impact on the growth of yield and health of cattle. It has reduced livestock theft and can count stock within a matter of minutes. The cattle management solution keeps a track on every individual cow and alerts the farmers if any change occurs. The adoption of revolutionary innovation in cattle management can change the outlook of livestock management. It contributes to saving money, efforts and time as well.ive