How should one go about when implementing an IoT application?

I read an interesting article today about how to calculate TCO and ROI for enterprise IoT implementations. It was a great article written by Scott Matteson which describes the three factors to consider when calculating TCO and ROI on IoT projects. He went into nice detail regarding current environmental costs, IoT implementation costs, and the projected savings the IoT project will provide.

While I love this article to help justify an IoT project, where should a company start?

Experts say to look at certain categories such as be Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, Optimizing Asset Availability and Performance, Smart, Productive, Profitable Operations, or Mobile Insight and Proactive Risk Mitigation. While those are great categories to think about, it doesn’t really answer the question of where to start.

In my opinion an organization should start small. IoT can be overwhelming and, on a macro level, is certainly an exercise in change management. But that doesn’t mean a company can’t begin an IoT implementation on a micro level to prove ROI and gain efficiency. In simple terms, think about tying hardware together with software. Basically, get your existing devices connected.

Look at things that make sense for your company such as remote monitoring, asset intelligence, predictive maintenance, workforce tracking, security, or smart metering for example and then pick one device, or one function, to connect. Build your POC on a simple use case and don’t forget to define your success criteria up front. Once you connect your device/s, you are going to start collecting a lot of data. Then you need to process and analyze the data to turn it into actionable information. How will you present that information, and to whom, in order to affect meaningful change? These are all things that need to be defined up front.

At Motifworks, we suggest utilizing some of the preconfigured solutions available in Azure IoT Suite, such as Remote Monitoring or Predictive Maintenance. Additionally, Motifworks offers an IoT Accelerator Package that can deliver a working proof of concept in just 6 weeks.

To recap…

IoT is an important part of modernizing your business. It’s an exercise in change management but doesn’t have to be all-consuming. We recommend starting small using preconfigured solutions and allowing Motifworks to help you get up and running in just six weeks. We can help you prove that ROI!