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Welcome
A recent Forrester study, commissioned by Cognizant, found that most companies deploying internet of things (IoT) lack a reliable process for executing on IoT initiatives. As a result, achieving high success with IoT programs remains a challenge for over 50% of decision makers who are deploying and/or piloting IoT at their companies.
To succeed with IoT, enterprises must be able to extend their IoT initiatives beyond pilot purgatory into successful deployments that can grow seamlessly with their businesses’ demands for data and insight.
Take this 3- to 5-minute assessment of your IoT practices to learn how prepared your company is to effectively scale its IoT initiatives beyond the pilot stage. Based on your results, the assessment will provide you with recommendations to drive greater success with IoT going forward.
Questions
Questions
Questions
Questions
Questions
Results Overview
Based on your responses to the survey questions regarding how prepared your organization is to scale IoT initiatives, your company’s classification is:
IoT Novice
IoT-Aware
IoT-Committed
Recommendations
Your overall rating is: IoT Novice
Your score of /100 classifies your company as lagging regarding your current ability to deploy IoT initiatives at scale, like 45% of the organizations engaging in IoT whose respondents we surveyed. Only 32% of respondents in the novice category report having a reliable process for executing IoT and delivering value compared to 75% of those companies with more sophisticated IoT practices. This represents a huge opportunity for you to take the right steps now for enabling your company to better scale IoT initiatives beyond the pilot phase and into full production across the organization.
A July 2020 Forrester study, commissioned by Cognizant, revealed that the ability to quickly and effectively scale IoT initiatives is impacted by five key levers. Companies that holistically focus on building their IoT programs by focusing on these five levers find it easier to expand and capture more value from their IoT initiatives. The levers, by order of importance and impact on scaling IoT more effectively, are described below:
Lever 1: Organizational enablement — This lever refers to the degree to which a company has a clear business case for IoT and the proper skills and tools to drive use cases forward. Organizational enablement was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
- Recommendation: Novice organizations must establish an official process and channel for relevant IT and operational stakeholders to identify IoT project initiatives and requirements. An important element of this process includes assessing the skill sets of current employees and determining if additional supplemental training or third-party support is necessary to fill in gaps in employee skills.
Lever 2: Infrastructure/technology — This lever includes a company’s architectural vision, building blocks, and technical capability to support and manage IoT deployments and corresponding data. Infrastructure/technology was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
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Recommendation: Create a scalable reference architecture that will enable your organization to accomplish its IoT initiatives and to differentiate itself along key areas. This reference architecture should be well aligned with the overall IoT strategy. Identify components of technology solutions that enable differentiation and create a plan to own key areas of differentiation either by owning these in-house or via strategic partnerships.
Perform a readiness assessment for each of the core technology components to identify technology and knowledge gaps. Create a plan to close existing gaps.
Lever 3: Integration with the enterprise — This lever is focused on ensuring IoT initiatives are well integrated with, and supported by, operational technologies and processes.
- Recommendation: Initial IoT use cases are often focused on a particular business process or operational enhancement. A key to successful, scalable IoT solution deployment requires organizations to break down silos between IT experts and business operations to ensure scalability requirements across organizational processes, technologies, and operations are addressed. Focus on identifying and establishing a cross-functional team structure that is well positioned to deliver successful IoT solutions. Include representatives from all core areas in the organization. Also, be sure to evaluate and align your organization’s processes to enable successful IoT initiatives.
Lever 4: Strategy — This lever encompasses a company’s IoT vision and roadmap and reflects the degree to which a company has executive alignment and support for its IoT initiatives.
- Recommendation: Establish an overarching IoT strategy, which enables alignment throughout the organization. This strategy must accomplish key business initiatives and include an actionable product and service roadmap whose solutions unlock new opportunities for users of these solutions. To position your organization for success, consider a plan of action across three core vectors: people, process, and technology. Create an org structure and accompanying processes that will enable successful IoT initiatives. Take an agile-based approach by seeding the market with MVP solutions that quickly validate market interest. Consider partnerships with organizations that have not only created IoT strategies but that also have experience building IoT solutions. This overarching IoT strategy will be the plan of record for investments and prioritization.
Lever 5: Data and analytics — Data and analytics address a company’s ability to use data from IoT-enabled products and processes to drive improvements. This includes the ability to apply more advanced analytics capabilities, such as predictive analysis and not just using descriptive analysis of IoT data.
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Recommendation: IoT solutions deliver business value when analysis of huge volumes of structured and unstructured data identifies trends, provides actionable insights, and anticipates events to unlock value. Ensure that your organization has a clear objective for how it will use IoT data and for which it has an effective way to distribute that data to key users throughout your organization.
Create an overarching data strategy for IoT solutions, which identifies the strongest opportunities for data from your organization’s solutions to provide value internally as well as a data monetization strategy with third parties. Create an ecosystem of third parties that find value in IoT data generated by your organization’s fielded solutions. Create a data capture and archival strategy to enable use cases that will enable near- and longer-term value.
Your overall rating is: IoT-Aware
Your score of /100 classifies your company’s ability to scale IoT initiatives as good, but still needing improvement — meaning you’re moving in the right direction to improve the scalability of IoT initiatives but still require more work in streamlining those efforts. Thirty-five percent of companies surveyed are classified as IoT-aware. Only 45% of respondents in the aware category report having a reliable process for executing IoT and delivering value compared to 75% of those companies with more sophisticated IoT practices. This represents an opportunity for you to take the right steps now for enabling your company to better scale IoT initiative beyond the pilot phase and into full production across the organization.
A July 2020 Forrester study, commissioned by Cognizant, revealed that the ability to quickly and effectively scale IoT initiatives is impacted by five key levers. Companies that holistically focus on building their IoT programs by focusing on these five levers find it easier to expand and capture more value from their IoT initiatives. The levers, by order of importance and impact on scaling IoT more effectively, are described below:
Lever 1: Organizational enablement — This lever refers to the degree to which a company has a clear business case for IoT and the proper skills and tools to drive use cases forward. Organization enablement was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
- Recommendation: Large-scale IoT program deployments cut across various operational processes such as research and development (R&D), plant operations, IT, compliance, and other business operations. Ensure a diversity of IT and OT stakeholders representing multiple organizational teams and that change management processes participate in identifying critical steps necessary to ensure the organization benefits from IoT initiatives.
Lever 2: Infrastructure/technology — This lever includes a company’s architectural vision, building blocks, and technical capability to support and manage IoT deployments and corresponding data. Infrastructure/technology was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
- Recommendation: Solidify and build out the technology architecture for your organization’s IoT solutions. Confirm those components of the technology solution that enable differentiation. Establish partnerships with organizations that have experience creating IoT solutions in areas that will not be owned in house. Ensure tight alignment between user experience, business outcomes, overall strategy, and technology implementation.
Lever 3: Integration with the enterprise — This lever is focused on ensuring IoT initiatives are well integrated with, and supported by, operational technologies and processes.
- Recommendation: To maximize the value of deploying IoT solutions and extend the reach of IoT initiatives across the organization, integrate IoT processes and data with both front- and back-end business functions including customer service and support, ERP, supply chain, manufacturing, and inventory management processes. Empower a cross-functional core team to develop and deliver successful IoT solutions. Use data from active IoT solutions to optimize your internal processes.
Lever 4: Strategy — This lever encompasses a company’s IoT vision and roadmap and reflects the degree to which a company has executive alignment and support for its IoT initiatives.
- Recommendation: Firm up your organization’s IoT strategy by ensuring that its overarching direction continues to be aligned with areas of strongest market opportunity. Ensure that IoT strategy includes concrete plan of action across three core vectors: people, process, and technology. Create an org structure and accompanying processes that will enable successful IoT initiatives. Iterate on roadmaps based on learnings from initial MVP releases. Build out a data monetization strategy. Consider technology and business partnerships to expedite time-to-market and to drive revenue. Develop a build, buy, partner strategy for enabling IoT solutions.
Lever 5: Data and analytics — Data and analytics address a company’s ability to use data from IoT-enabled products and processes to drive improvements. This includes the ability to apply more advanced analytics capabilities, such as predictive analysis and not just using descriptive analysis of IoT data.
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Recommendation: Work with IT and OT stakeholders participating in each IoT use case to identify the specific structured, unstructured, and analytics requirements for each use case. Elements to assess and address for each use case include how to handle the variety of structured and unstructured data sources, how much data volume will be generated from IoT use cases, and the necessity for real-time data analytics processes.
Solidify your organization’s overarching data strategy across the portfolio of IoT solutions. Align this data strategy with areas of strongest opportunity internally as well as unlocking data monetization opportunities with third parties. Formalize an ecosystem of third-party organizations that derive value from data from your organization’s solutions. Begin monetizing this data.
Your overall rating is: IoT-Committed
Your score of /100 classifies your company as a leader regarding your ability to quickly scale IoT initiatives across your organization. Only 20% of companies surveyed were classified as committed, which puts you in a strong competitive position. Seventy-five percent of committed companies from our survey report having a reliable process for executing IoT and delivering value compared to just 33% of those classified as IoT novices (lowest rating). Your organization is likely already seeing the benefits of being able to effectively scale IoT initiatives, but there is always more that can be done. Continued improvement to your IoT practices will help drive lasting value for your IoT initiatives and position you to scale future IoT initiatives with greater ease.
A July 2020 Forrester study, commissioned by Cognizant, revealed that the ability to quickly and effectively scale IoT initiatives is impacted by five key levers. Companies that holistically focus on building their IoT programs by focusing on these five levers find it easier to expand and capture more value from their IoT initiatives. The levers, by order of importance and impact on scaling IoT more effectively, are described below.
Lever 1: Organizational enablement — This lever refers to the degree to which a company has a clear business case for IoT and the proper skills and tools to drive use cases forward. Organization enablement was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
- Recommendation: Focus on deploying end-to-end IoT solutions including developing IoT-enabled devices, deploying IoT applications to enhance operations, and using captured insight to transform products, processes, and customer experiences. Ensure operational stakeholders, technology experts, and product development teams have the necessary tools to successfully deploy IoT solutions. This requires a corporatewide focus on training and educating stakeholders to ensure they have the necessary skills to successfully deploy comprehensive IoT solutions, capture insight from IoT initiatives, and work with third-party partners to address gaps in employee skills and expertise.
Lever 2: Infrastructure/technology — This lever includes a company’s architectural vision, building blocks, and technical capability to support and manage IoT deployments and corresponding data. Infrastructure/technology was tied for first as the most impactful lever.
- Recommendation: Identify opportunities to leverage new cloud-based technologies to increase the value your IoT solutions. Consider opportunities to leverage advanced cloud and edge-based analytics provided by hyperscaler cloud platforms. Consider opportunities to leverage IoT software platforms to simplify the process of connecting, securing, managing, and enabling new applications and analytics insight from these solutions.
Lever 3: Integration with the enterprise — This lever is focused on ensuring IoT initiatives are well integrated with, and supported by, operational technologies and processes.
- Recommendation: Create a comprehensive view of how IoT impacts your business and customers, which spans product development, operational processes, and customer experience. Assess opportunities to integrate IoT solutions into a wide array of business tasks and operational functions, as well as identifying opportunities to integrate insight captured from these initiatives across the organization. Leverage a cross-functional core team to continue to develop and deliver successful IoT solutions. Consider learnings from initial product releases to align efforts around new IoT solution releases.
Lever 4: Strategy — This lever encompasses a company’s IoT vision and roadmap and reflects the degree to which a company has executive alignment and support for its IoT initiatives.
- Recommendation: With a clear baseline IoT strategy in place, it is time to identify opportunities to build out your IoT solutions at scale. Consider learnings from initial IoT releases and pivot strategy based on these. Key areas of focus include data monetization, partner ecosystem, enhanced service offerings, go-to-market planning, and sales enablement. Create a go-to-market plan that identifies and optimizes the sales channel to drive market adoption. Partner with organizations with real-world experience having built IoT solutions.
Lever 5: Data and analytics — Data and analytics address a company’s ability to use data from IoT-enabled products and processes to drive improvements. This includes the ability to apply more advanced analytics capabilities, such as predictive analysis and not just using descriptive analysis of IoT data.
- Recommendation: Using IoT data to drive positive outcomes requires stakeholders to understand the value of predictive analytics, streaming analytics, and machine learning solutions. On top of that, data pros must work with line-of-business executives who can provide feedback into the machine learning models and AI algorithms to ensure actionable insight is identified from the breadth of IoT use cases and the information is shared with relevant IT and OT stakeholders throughout the organization. Formalize plans to expand revenue generated from third-party data monetization. Develop a product and services data roadmap that aligns with data monetization opportunities. Solidify and expand the ecosystem of third-party organizations that compensate your organization for IoT data from fielded solutions. Expand data monetization opportunities.
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For a deeper look, read the July 2020 Forrester Thought Leadership Study, “No More IoT IOUs: Start Scaling IoT With Five Key Levers,” commissioned by Cognizant. This study reveals clear steps IoT leaders can take to improve their companies’ ability to drive greater success and value with their IoT initiatives.
Methodology
Methodology, Disclaimers and Disclosures
Methodology
Methodology
In this study, Forrester interviewed six IoT decision makers at companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue that have several use cases for IoT and conducted an online survey of 524 manager-level and higher IoT strategy and IoT data and analytics decision makers in the US and EMEA to evaluate why many IoT projects don’t gain the investment or support to scale across the business and geographies, never making it past the pilot phase. The survey was completed in March 2020.
Disclaimer
Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this assessment, Cognizant and Forrester are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The tool is provided “as is,” and Forrester and Cognizant make no warranties of any kind. Forrester does not endorse Cognizant or its offerings.