The Essentials of an Effective IoT Strategy

Clearly, that needs to change in the months and years ahead. You need to get moving now, and here are a few considerations when embarking on an IoT strategy.

Consider your safety and security risk

Let’s deal with the hippopotamus in the room (it’s big but more slippery than an elephant). The BPI survey points out that security is the number one concern holding companies back. This is the right concern - every IoT deployment must have security and privacy at the core of its design.

There are multiple examples of security flaws and hacks of cameras, energy meters, dishwashers, any of which could have catastrophic impacts on a brand. CIOs must be ever vigilant about insecure IoT deployments getting anywhere near your core network. However, with the right team and partners, IoT security can be managed. Security guidelines such as those from the Industrial Internet Consortium are a good place to start.

Start small with a vision to scale.

Don’t worry if you are one of the 93 percent without a clear vision, yet. Having strong, entrepreneurial business sponsorship and an agile approach to experimentation will help you galvanise a vision that is clear and based on experience and insight.

When we began our first trials with our consumer IoT offering, Telstra Smart Home, we knew the technology was maturing and early customer use cases were just emerging. We started with an end-to-end secured platform, then focused on a series of trials and experiments, firstly with Telstra staff and eventually with beta customers. This process quickly narrowed the device range to those that were resonating most with customers.

We had a phased launch with a secure, high functioning minimum viable product, knowing the future of our platform will include dozens more connected devices and curated experiences across areas like insurance savings, home health, and energy management. Our ongoing experimentation has helped us shape our vision of what is possible.

Get the right settings to scale.

Once you are confident you have an IoT solution that is going to delight your customers or improve your operations, it is critical you don’t fall at the scale hurdle.

Whether you’re launching a product to market or rolling out an IoT deployment across your company, simplicity is key. Though we were tempted to launch Smart Home pre-integrated with dozens of devices, we needed to train hundreds of stores and thousands of consultants and decided we were better off with a product that was able to be simply demonstrated and sold in its early days. We are seeing strong sales momentum as a result.

Likewise, your network and platform choices will be critical. Emerging low power networks like LoRa can be low cost to get going if you only need to operate in a confined area, but if you need broader coverage you may want to look at the soon to launch LTE-based networks like LTE-M or Narrowband IoT. Obviously, scalable cloud infrastructure makes the most sense here.

I was laughing with a colleague recently about how 15 years ago we had document folders titled “Internet”, and now we, along with most of you, will have folders for “IoT”. Rapidly the solutions overrun the paradigm. You couldn’t imagine doing business without the net – soon you will say the same about IoT. As long as you are confident you can proceed securely, proceed rapidly! If you need help, seek the right partner. The IoT further democratises the ability for every company to innovate, and you might just be the next big thing.