One of the most important things in this fast-paced, modern world is the amount and variety of technology we hold. From the very common example in our daily lives, mobile phones, to the trending buzz of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, technology is always part of our life, though we realize it. One such technology that is evolving so well in its usage and benefits is theInternet of Things(IoT), making it the popular choice for many to opt in the world. It is so rewarding at the individual and institutional level for an enterprise with the amount of impact they possess and the revolution they brought in. 

According to sources, if the companies blend the IoT technology properly with the physical world, the result can generate an economic evaluation of up to $11 trillion. Read more to understand IoT meaning, IoT technologies, IoT industries, and the top benefits of using the Internet of Things in business.

What does IoT mean? 

The Internet of Things encompasses a system where everything, from objects like wearable to objects like industrial sensors, is connected to the internet. These objects interact in turn via sensors by the mechanism. Apart from aiding personally in individuals’ lives, it can also help establish more efficiency in the business and increase productivity by gaining actionable insights with IoT. For example, security is one of the greatest reasons that made IoT devices gain so much importance. Yet other tantalizing returns are also there, as below mentioned. 

IoT in Business Examples

There are many inspiring and amazing examples where top businesses have tremendously used IoT technology with integration with existing business models for greater benefits.         

A UK–based company, BT, one of top communication service – provider employ the usage of location intelligence and IoT framework for deploying engineers and uses location mapping intelligence applications to get the maximum performance with existing employees and resources. With location intelligence, the company can clearly visualize the actual real-time data from sensors. This information is used to find the employees’ network and correlate it with the customers’ properties. Thus, with all these potential technologies of IoT, the company can respond faster to the needs of the customers, and with the location details of employees and data of the customers, better and highly informed decisions are taken while releasing a new service. 

Siemens, one of the biggest engineering firms in Europe and one of the leading suppliers of wind power in the world, brilliantly taps onto the potential of IoT technology. They have transformed farms to be smart. The company can check hundreds of turbines existing remotely using the RTI messaging software. Hence, predictive maintenance is so feasible for them – i.e., they can maximize the productivity and efficiency of usage of these wind turbines in highly unpredictable weather.

Read More : “IoT in Home Automation: Create an Ultimate IoT Smart Home“

UPS enterprise has got one of the best IoT business ideas employed for reducing the operational costs in delivering goods by tracking the driver’s routes. The company beautifully blended the vehicle sensors with GPS tracking technology, which helped the driver to know the shortest route to be undertaken, with the most cost-effective combination of routes. It has brought a huge revolution economically and environmentally – the fuel of quantity around 1.5 million gallons was completely saved on just rightly covering 10000 routes. It’s a great saver of money and carbon footprints.  

Advantages of IoT for any Business

1.Enhance Productivity

Maximizing the amount of output from the given set of outputs is termed productivity. Every company craves this vital point of more efficiency in production, and increasing the output produced productivity. With IoT applications in manufacturing, manufacturing units can rightly assess what and where a specific demand arises and collate the resources accordingly, and efficiently manage all the stages in the production activities. Apart from monitoring production, IoT also trains the employees in real-time to be more skillful and productive members, for contributing a more positive impact to the firm. 

IoT keeps the employees well–informed, fosters a better relationship with clients, and takes care of many activities like the warning of troubles and disruptions beforehand. Moreover, IoT devices can perform even jobs like making coffees for employees as a routine. Thus, IoT lets the employees train more and focus on essential things for the firm’s development.  

2.A better understanding of customer behavior

It’s ultimately the customers who would decide the result of any firm’s service and product and thus are the kings that businesses reach out to. Hence, having a good command over the preferences and the behavior of all kinds of the audience helps in understanding what kind of product and service they like and dislike, what more has to be added and what has to be deleted in existing products and services. 

IoT developers help using IoT and aid in making this massive market study possible as the businesses would be able to gather, analyze, interpret data from customers’ activities like – video surveillance, and their usage of mobile, internet, and social media. 

3.New Business Opportunities

Businesses needn’t be conventional with the existence of a physical market, customers coming there to get the requirements. As time changes, businesses change, and the number of possibilities one can have in business is countless. To make the best use of those opportunities and create new possibilities, IoT would be the best and trustable partner, aiding from the first stage of business – production to marketing until the aftermath of customer support. 

IoT-influenced technologies have revolutionized the business atmosphere, helping in reaching out better to the customers, and collaborating with an IoT Solutions Company or IoT development company, can offer practical solutions for many uncertainties in business. 

4.Cost-effectiveness

Developing a great product is the first aim of any business. Finding apt customers and taking the product to them follows next to branding it right and gaining profits. But, in all the stages, money would be involved in some form or another – directly or indirectly, and one can’t afford to lose every penny in unnecessary costs than focussing on the product. IoT applications and solutions come to the rescue here. They predict and alarm about the downtime of equipment by monitoring the equipment. Hence, the costs for rectifying misalignments and failures are reduced greatly. It is one of the prime advantages of IoT. 

Similarly, energy efficiency can be improved with IoT, and costs involved in energy can be cut down. With all these costs cut, a firm can establish its competitive advantage over others. 

5.Better utilization and maintenance of assets

As important as assets are for a business, equally important is the round clock maintenance of the assets. Especially, assets like equipment, tools, machinery, etc. should be mandatorily monitored. But, key IoT technologies can be a savior. IoT application connected via a sensor to these assets offers one real-time insight about the machinery or other assets, wherever one is. Additionally, the sensor can help in operating the system better while the detector lets one to easily find where the fault occurred. But, in times of emergency, the sensor alarming, the IoT application switches off the machinery, preventing overheating and other disastrous results.  

6.Enhanced customer service and experience

Flawless and completely streamlined service is always sought by customers would enhance the profit of any entity. IoT trends in manufacturing, if used, would increase the ease with which the customers can access the product/service. The major examples are mobile card readers, smart trackers, and hyper-local advertising. Mobile card readers guide a customer to process the transactions easily as mobile card readers can connect to smartphones. Meanwhile, smart trackers help the customer to track the entire process of shipping.

Finally, hyper-local advertising, along with couponing, can be employed by firms to give more customer satisfaction along with the aforementioned technologies. Even problems customers face can be identified, and a proactive solution can be rendered to the customers with the help of smart grid technologies and meters.

7. Workplace safety 

IoT companies craft devices that can ensure employers and employees with greater safety in their working environment. It’s of the greatest use for employers and employees in high–risk situations like mining, construction, and other heavy industries, etc. Those work environments can have unpleasant and unanticipated disasters at any point in time, like a collision or a fire. Thus, to ensure the fullest safety of the workers, embedded wearables, as well as sensors, two of the most common IoT technologies, can be used. These IoT-connected devices would constantly monitor the surrounding environments and would warn and alert in case of emergencies like falls as well as exhaustion. Similarly, in firms running on a small scale, smart locks and video surveillance with IoT can be of nice help. 

8.Real-time analytics

One of the best advantages of IoT is the real-time analytics it can offer. This real-time analytics help in analyzing the customer patterns and behavior, which in turn is crucial for marketing, sustaining the target audience, and building brand loyalty. The analytics also reaches great heights with digital twins – a product being represented virtually, one of the booming segments of IoT. At the same time, internally, inside an enterprise, analytics is highly useful in detecting the problems and taking the right steps for solutions. It aids greatly in spotting the issues at the earliest and resolving it as per the individual and enterprises’ convenience, with informed decisions. 

9.Historical Analysis

One of the greatest reasons for actuaries and research and development departments to hold an important position in every firm is their role – they use the past data, analyze the perks and downfalls, and propose the right strategies for the future. But for firms with limited resources and analysts, or for large films to calculate the historical analytics in a very short span of time with greater accuracy and precision, IoT can be used. IoT aids greatly in bringing back the past industrial data with a lot of ease. That data can thereby be used for predictive analysis and render customized products. It is one of the major applications of IoT in business.

10.Ensuring good Storage and selling environment

For the firms producing and selling goods that are perishable, necessary storage conditions for an ambient environment are essential for having a long life of goods. Adhering to these storage conditions is essential. IoT is so helpful in ensuring these as smart sensors can deal with this – they can detect any change in the surroundings and can warn the supervisor as the system is designed. It is one of the major applications of IoT in business. Their major features would be measuring the temperature, humidity, and any other important input that is required for meeting the stringiest of conditions for products.

Read More : “PropTech & IoT: Adoption of technology for smart building and smart cities“

11.Beacons

Beacons are tiny hardware transmitters that work in low energy and can send messages and signals to smart devices like the smartphones that are nearby, in a certain specified radius. When talking about the internet of things in business, marketing using beacon is one of the splendid ideas used to attract customers today by fostering interaction and engagement. By promoting more interaction, the brand is more visible, intrigues high chances for individuals to change into customers, and building brand loyalty. For example, a beacon can send information about attractive offers a company gives to a visitor who crosses. Even occasional visitors can be stimulated by these offers, small information. 

12.Digital factory

A digital factory is a factory where almost all of the tools are connected via the internet, and they deliver exceptional performance in comparison with conventional ones. The amusing characteristics like optimization, maintenance of equipment, automation of the entire workflow, remote management are all possible with IoT technology. These features lead to the implementation of other amusing policies like inventory management. Human error can also be minimized to the core. 

13.Quality control

The quality of the product and the inputs involved in raw materials are important. IoT technology sensors use previous product data and data from other sources. The IoT devices would help in identifying the quality of the product by analyzing all the input factors, constituents, external environment, etc. and the product can be sent for delivery to customers.

14.Packaging Optimization

Having received all data about how the customers and employees handle products, the IoT technology can propose the right method of packing that can help in withstanding wear and tear, damage to the valuable product. Everything, right from unpredictable conditions like weather to expected transformational damage, the IoT devices would aid in re-engineering and restructuring products and packaging with the same essence in a feasible way.

15.Optimization of Logistics and the Supply Chain

IoT technology offers real-time visualization of all the data by tracking every process of the manufacturing process. Thus, effective monitoring, reporting, and tracking can render the optimization of costs, maximization of productivity, the connection of all suppliers to the industry, and thus, aids in predicting issues, reducing the capital requirements, decreasing the inventory, etc. 

Read More : “Leveraging IoT & Related Technologies in Real Estate & PropTech“

Some Final Words

There are infinite IoT challenges and opportunities, hand in hand, and IoT continues to boom in and around the globe. Thus, every business must stay in touch with IoT trends and stay in tune with the flow, and receive the best of technical solutions using the technology

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