London, May 24, 2017: This can’t be good news for the Internet of Things (IoT). A study by Cisco has revealed that 60 per cent of IoT initiatives stalled at the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage, and only 26 per cent of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a “complete success”. Even worse: a third of all completed projects were not considered a success.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” said Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IoT and Applications, Cisco. “But there are plenty of things we can do to get more projects out of pilot and to complete success, and that’s what we’re here in London to do.”
Cisco released the findings at IoT World Forum (IoTWF), an event where Cisco convenes the industry leaders with the goal of accelerating IoT. The company said it had surveyed 1,845 IT and business decision-makers in the United States, UK, and India across a range of industries — manufacturing, local government, retail/hospitality/sports, energy (utilities/oil & gas/mining), transportation, and health care. All respondents worked for organisations that were implementing and/or had completed IoT initiatives. All were involved in the overall strategy or direction of at least one of their organisation’s IoT initiatives. The goal was to gain insight into both the successes as well as the challenges that are impacting progress.
Here are the key findings:
1 – The “human factor” matters. IoT may sound like it is all about technology, but human factors like culture, organisation, and leadership are critical. In fact, three of the four top factors behind successful IoT projects had to do with people and relationships:
– Collaboration between IT and the business side was the #1 factor, cited by 54 per cent.
– A technology-focused culture, stemming from top-down leadership and executive sponsorship, was called key by 49 per cent.
– IoT expertise, whether internal or through external partnership, was selected by 48 per cent.
In addition, organisations with the most successful IoT initiatives leveraged ecosystem partnerships most widely. They used partners at every phase, from strategic planning to data analytics after rollout.
2. Don’t Go It Alone. Sixty per cent of respondents emphasised that IoT initiatives often looked good on paper but proved much more difficult than anyone expected. Top five challenges across all stages of implementation – time to completion, limited internal expertise, quality of data, integration across teams, and budget overruns. The study found that the most successful organisations engaged the IoT partner ecosystem at every stage, implying that strong partnerships throughout the process can smooth out the learning curve.
“We are seeing new IoT innovations almost every day,” said Inbar Lasser-Raab, VP of Cisco Enterprise Solutions Marketing. “We are connecting things that we never thought would be connected, creating incredible new value to industries. But where we see most of the opportunity, is where we partner with other vendors and create solutions that are not only connected but also share data. That shared data is the basis of a network of industries – sharing of insights to make tremendous gains for business and society, because no one company can solve this alone.”
3. Reap the Benefits. When critical success factors came together, organisations were in position to reap a windfall in smart-data insights.
Seventy-three per cent of all participants are using data from IoT completed projects to improve their business. Globally, the top 3 benefits of IoT include improved customer satisfaction (70%), operational efficiencies (67%) and improved product / service quality (66%). In addition, improved profitability was the top unexpected benefit (39%)
4. Learn from the failures. Taking on these IoT projects had led to another unexpected benefit: 64 percent agreed that learnings from stalled or failed IoT initiatives had helped accelerate their organization’s investment in IoT.
Despite the challenges, many in the survey were optimistic for the future of IoT — a trend that, for all its forward momentum, was still in its nascent stages of evolution. Sixty-one per cent believed that we have barely begun to scratch the surface of what IoT technologies can do for their businesses.
To learn more about the survey, go here.
Image Credit: IoTWF