The top eight questions end-users need to ask to build a successful IoT GTM strategy

London, United Kingdom - 09 Jan 2018

As 61% of enterprises have already deployed an IoT solution, or are planning to in the next year, it is essential that both enterprises and providers ask the right questions early to maximize their IoT ROI. ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies, has identified eight questions that innovative companies need to ask to turn their IoT visions into reality.

“When these solutions work, they work well,” says Ryan Harbison, Research Analyst at ABI Research. “However, these solutions can have detrimental effects if any area was overlooked in the development of these systems. If execution, technology, or supplier choices are poor, rest assured that the results will be poor. Poor solutions can negatively affect sales of existing products and services, disrupt internal organizational workflows, and damage relationships with customers—all results enterprises want to avoid.”

So, how can enterprises avoid deploying a poor solution? First, potential IoT end-users need to ensure that they have properly identified the strategic business objectives they are trying to achieve before they create IoT use cases and align IoT use cases to customer needs and these objectives. Secondly, organizations need to achieve internal stakeholder alignment with all functional employee groups since IoT affects multiple layers of an organization to decide which parts of the solution to build in-house and which parts to buy. Lastly, enterprises need to assess partners for IoT enablement and lifecycle management operations keeping in mind that these decisions drive strategic and long-term success.

While it is essential for enterprises to consider these factors before building and deploying an IoT solution, it is also crucial that IoT suppliers understand these factors and guide their customers around the common pitfalls. Two of the biggest inhibitors of IoT adoption are aligning the solution within existing systems and the complexity and fragmentation of the supply chain. IoT suppliers need to understand that potential end-users are looking to partner with suppliers who have worked to ease the process of developing these solutions.

“As a result, we are seeing a surge in the market of companies that offer professional services—strategic consulting services, project management, and ROI analysis—in addition to their core competencies,” concludes Harbison. “Companies like Dell, Digi International, and Bsquare are among those complementing their IoT solutions with additional value-added services. The number of suppliers offering these solutions will only continue to rise as business value shifts from output to outcome-based.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s Turning IoT Vision into Reality: Top 8 Questions to Build a Successful IoT GTM Strategy report. This report is part of the company’s M2M, IoT & IoE research service, which includes research, data, and analyst insights.