There is the temptation, on seeing a successful IoT use case in action, to want to apply it to your business, but Myles advises not to focus on the technology from the outset. “Put the technology to one side at the beginning and look at what you want to achieve, whether it's automating a process, reducing operational costs, enhancing customer interaction or creating a new business model. The initial goal is to identify the problem or challenge you need to solve or the opportunity you want to realise. Only once that is established should you move on to determine an IoT solution to meet that need.”

Build a business case

At this stage you should ask a number of important questions: what is the business goal of the IoT solution; how will its success be determined; what the return on investment ROI will be; what effect will it have on existing systems, processes, customers and employees? “Building the business case is as much about change management as it is about the solution,” Myles says. “For an IoT project to be successful all relevant stakeholders need to be consulted up front. It's important to understand how any solution will impact the business and its people. It's worth speaking with stakeholders as early as possible in the process so they are engaged with the project and can see the benefits any solution would deliver.”

Test and pilot

“Testing is a necessary phase of any IoT implementation. You should run an internal pilot of the solution followed by a small scale roll out. A retailer rolling out digital signage and IoT, for example, should trial it initially in one store. Seeing the solution in action in the real world means they can see if it's doing everything they expect it to do. Working with companies trialing IoT projects we’ve seen firsthand how the data derived from a pilot can often deliver both expected and unexpected insights,” says Myles. “You can't predict exactly how a solution will work, particularly once you bring the human element into it. That's why these trial runs are so important and they can really throw up some useful information.”

For example, one of our clients, a home security provider, identified that their customers were reluctant to sign up to an alarm monitoring service. An opportunity was identified to develop a mobile application, for their customers to remotely manage their alarms. By establishing this new model, it revealed that customers were happy to monitor their alarms remotely. This in turn provided the business with a new service revenue stream, which has delivered a significant return on investment.

Successfully scale your IoT project

If you are to roll out an IoT solution across your organisation, you need to be confident that it will scale. To do so it must be able to cope with a large number of connected devices and grow as the business requires without any loss in reliability. In short, the IoT solution needs to be future-proofed and be capable of growing with the business without a requirement for a whole new system.

“A large IoT deployment will obviously mean collecting and analysing huge amounts of data. This is where a strong IoT partner will prove to be of real value. They will understand what's required and will build a robust IoT system that can organically grow as the business needs it,” says Myles. “For companies that are looking to take an IoT solution global, we advise that they seek out a partner that can offer multi-network capabilities. This would maximise device connectivity, which is a vital component in an enterprise's global IoT plans.”