Have you considered adopting IoT into your business? Source: Shutterstock

The opportunities and challenges of enterprise IoT adoption

THE past few years have witnessed an increasing surge of interest in the Internet of Things (IoT); the network of connected smart devices that communicate with each other over the internet.

While there has been a strong focus of attention on consumer IoT products such as smart home devices, the most exciting IoT innovations are happening in the business world.

A combination of data collected by IoT sensors and analytical algorithms are enabling businesses across varying sectors to streamline their operations, increase productivity, and develop leading-edge products.

The opportunities of enterprise IoT

Dr. Guo Feng, CTO of Enterprise IoT sector in Huawei, shared with Tech Wire Asia the main opportunities for businesses adopting IoT.

According to Feng, among the benefits of enterprise IoT adoption are:

  • Improved customer experience
  • Potential new business models
  • New revenue streams
  • Better operations and maintenance efficiency
  • More competitive product and service

The Internet of Things is enabling manufacturers to become smarter. Source: Shutterstock

Feng notes that different regions and industries set their own prioritization of these opportunities.

For instance, manufacturing enterprises in China are more interested in using IoT solutions to improve factory operation visibility and intelligence, ensuring the quality of production can be monitored and ensured.

“They are also looking at energy consumption optimization, this will be particularly attractive to process manufacturing industries, for example, the oil and gas refinery industry,” Feng explained.

Conversely, some companies are more interested in digitizing their product by bringing connectivity and intelligence to the product they are delivering to the end customer.

An example of one such company is Schindler elevators who has started their Internet of Elevators and Escalators (IoEE) program.

This has enabled all of the Schindler elevators of the world to be connected and monitored, ensuring the elevator does not experience unexpected breakdowns. This also allows them to better manage their workforce to carry out any necessary maintenance and service work.

The challenges of digital transformation and IoT adoption

So, with the benefits of enterprise IoT being so clear, what are the main barriers to adoption?

Feng told Tech Wire Asia:

“The challenges come from various aspects, such as lack of skilled people, highly diversified solutions to choose from, expensive and dedicated sensors, and unproven business cases.”

However, the most challenging issue, according to Feng, is the validity of the business model.

“As for a new product and solution, it is very tricky to evaluate what is the right pricing for this solution. The enterprise customer is usually making judgments based on whether this solution may generate new business values for the company,” explained Feng.

But while this may be a fair demand from the enterprise customer, according to Feng, a good result from solutions does not come naturally from the vendor. Rather, what determines the success of digital transformation is highly dependent on the determination of the company.

“Most of the time this will require the enterprise to invest in their own business processes, re-defining their traditional product and portfolio and KPIs, and sometimes it may even bring impact to the existing organization,” said Feng.

Dr. Guo Feng will be speaking at the ConnecTechAsia Summit 2018, taking place in Singapore from Tuesday 26th June – Thursday 28th June.