Five Tips for a Successful IoT Program

The Internet of things (IoT) is the connection of physical devices – including vehicles, machinery, and buildings – embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity to collect and exchange data. To get the most value from the abundance of information collected, you need a plan to efficiently and effectively aggregate, store, and analyze all of the data.

1. Develop an IoT strategy. Why are you collecting all of this data? What are you trying to achieve? Can IoT data help you improve efficiency, evaluate productivity, grow your business, improve customer service?
2. Choose a scalable platform. The number of IoT devices is increasing rapidly, and your business needs to scale quickly to keep up. Solutions that aren’t scalable won’t capture all of the available data, and you could miss key insights and make suboptimal decisions.
3. Invest in advanced analytics. IoT enables you to collect data on raw materials, inventory, operations, and products, but manually evaluating so much data is too cumbersome. Real-time data loses its value if it takes days or weeks to analyze. Advanced analytics solutions analyze data in minutes, providing immediate insight and the opportunity to address problems quickly.
4. Don’t neglect long-term analyses. Real-time analysis of data provides tremendous value, but you can gain additional insight by analyzing historical data to understand long term trends. Make sure your analytics solution can do both.
5. Merge IoT data with other data sources. IoT data does not capture the entire business. For example, if a shipment is delayed IoT data can provide information on operations and materials with IoT sensors. However, if the delay was caused by other factors, such as weather, you are missing a key piece of information. Effective analytics solutions incorporate data from other data sources – CTRM, ETRM, ERP, spreadsheets, weather, market data – to provide a more comprehensive and accurate picture.  

Choosing the right analytics solution is essential to gaining the most value from IoT data. Make sure you choose a system that helps you gain the most value.