IIoT As a Competitive Advantage
There’s a certain intrigue in the ability to collect massive amounts of data through an endless supply of connected devices. The dream of gathering real-time and specialized data sets creates euphoria for data-led companies. However, there is a cost to implementing connected devices and the data collection is only but a step along a path towards driving real actionable outcomes. Beyond gathering the right data in the right way, it also has to be effectively fed into the appropriate analytical tools then manipulated and massaged into actionable insights capable of directing both technical and non-technical decision-making.
This holds true across the Internet of Things and certainly for the industrial Internet of Things. However, as the author of this article stated, “IIoT projects work best with an outcome-centric approach coupled with design thinking, which applies new-age technologies in the context of a domain to create tangible impact for sustainable competitive advantage.”
This last element, “create tangible impact for sustainable competitive advantage” could be a driving force for broader IoT adoption across industrial companies. A “competitive advantage” gained through technology is often difficult to defend because it can be backward-engineered and copied within a few years or less. But IIoT companies typically have exclusive access to their assets with the IoT connected devices. These companies could maintain a more sustainable competitive advantage if the outcomes they can generate provide actionable insights only available through data gathered from their connected devices. Suddenly, the cost and complexity of collecting data becomes a business strategy to win more customers.
Originally published at IoT Sources.
