Improved customer service is the main reason for companies investing in the internet of things reports the Harvard Business Review.
Having surveyed 269 businesses for their Internet of Things: Science Fiction or Business Fact? report commissioned by US telco Verizon, the Harvard Business Review team found 51% of companies expected improved customer service as being the main result from their IoT deployment.
Of those who have deployed IoT technologies, 62% reported they had seen improved customer responsiveness with authors citing jet engine manufacturers, share car services and stock feed companies having benefiting from their investments.
Tying together technologies that until recently have been stand alone is the key part of the returns realised by companies, allowing older monitoring systems to work better together and increase the value of the data they gather.
IoT can enable “an incredible unlocking of information about processes that companies never had before,” said Vernon Turner, senior vice president of research and IoT executive lead at International Data Corp. (IDC). Companies that take the time to review and analyze these workflows will quickly find that there are significant opportunities to be found, such as increased efficiency. But the biggest change IoT brings to consumer companies is the increased contact with customers, Turner said.
Of the IoT investments, the main area nominated for companies in the next year is asset tracking with 36% of respondents saying that will be their main focus. Combined with the 19% looking at fleet management, it shows that sector will probably the most lucrative for businesses servicing the IoT market.
Risks in the IoT
While tying together these technologies brings a lot of opportunities there’s no shortage of risks as devices that were never intended to be connected to the net are suddenly part of the global network. The survey shows some managers are aware of the risks that the IoT presents to their businesses with 46 percent citing privacy and regulatory compliance as being risks.
Another challenge facing IoT deployments is a lack of skills with two out of five respondents flagging they can’t find workers with the skillsets needed to leverage IoT data. The task of managing the volumes of data also worries a third of the managers surveyed.
The Verizon and HBR survey shows that managers and businesses are still in the early days of understanding the tasks and challenges presented by the internet of things — one suspects that were managers fully across the privacy and security implications the number of respondents flagging concerns would be close to one hundred percent.
For companies like Verizon who are catering to the M2M and IoT marketplaces this survey is a handy roadmap that lays out the market opportunities for the next two years.