How they connected lights and phones to improve their business? | Reaping Business values through IoBT
Unarguably the biggest driver of productivity and growth in the next decade, the Internet of Things will accelerate the reinvention of sectors that account for almost two-thirds of world output. With the technology that is believed to produce an economic gain of US$14.2 Trillion in the next decade, are we just using it to control the room temperature and record our favorite TV shows? Or are we heading beyond the abilities of just monitoring your home appliances?
When small startups could easily leverage IoT into their business model, how did a 230 year old large financial firm in the world managing assets approximately $1.7Trillion, build the “Internet of Business Things” architecture and improved the experience of customers and employees just by connecting phones and lights? How did the UX connect the dots to boost their revenue and transform the workforce? How did we connect more and got better?
How they connected lights and phones to improve their business? | Reaping Business values through IoBT
Abstract
Many recent technological advances have been distributed everywhere, producing a world where existing objects—from machines to cars, refrigerators, phones and even people, plants or animals—can be connected to the Internet to collect and receive data. This developing frontier, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), is generating a multitude of new opportunities which will accelerate the reinvention of sectors opening up a new era of economic growth and competitiveness that accounts for almost two-third of world output. Massive volumes of data from connected products, and the ability to automate decision making and take actions in real time can translate technology transformation into business opportunities. From 9 Billion connected devices, we have an estimate of 30 Billion connected devices by 2020.
The Big companies have been adopting IoT by using Sensors and embedded technologies for years as a way to reduce costs, improve services or automate operations. On the similar line, 4.1 billion M2M connections have use-cases framed around the industries to use data and frame algorithms for automation. These connected devices and machines form an intelligent system of systems. In recent reports from companies like McKinsey, Accenture, Cisco, Intel, and Bosch, the estimated potential economic impact of the Internet of Things will be around US$14.2 Trillion. The economic gain for US economy exclusively will be around US$7.1 Trillion.
All in all, I wanted to shed light on 5 core issues of IoT in Business,
1. What are we doing with this disruptive technology?
2. Why the majority of Business groups not leveraging IoT?
3. Which sectors are doing it and how?
4. Internet of Business Things(IoBT) – The Initiative
5. How the company leveraged it and the results
This massive disruptive technology is said to transform people’s lives and the entire world around them just like the invention of Electricity did. This transformative strategy that will flip the business, revenue, technology, market and much more are experiencing a large gap between readiness and reality. A survey run across 450+ big companies around the world showed statistics stating 84% of the companies are ready to adopt IoT in their Business model or create a new service-based income streams from IoT. But the industry reality is that only 7% of the companies are having a clear comprehensive strategy to implement IoT in their business model or strategy. A whooping number of 73% of companies are yet to make concrete progress with the IoT into their Businesses.
Such a powerful transforming tool is leveraged in its early stages by Consumer goods companies like Samsung, Phillips for creating smart homes by connecting the home appliances like washing machines, televisions, refrigerators, door locks, air conditioners and so on. Other sectors of business such as finance and banking, health care, technology, telecommunication, travel and utilities are still in the research phase or assessing phase to step into IoT. The barriers that are stopping the Executive Management from adopting the IoT in their business model would be around the breach points and threats, inconsistent network availability, data latency versus business value, unprecedented data volumes and velocity.
Across many sectors a very countable number of companies are strategically leveraging IoT into their business model and architecting the features thereby reaping the revenue out of it.
1. Automobile industries like Mercedes, BMW have leveraged IoT by equipping their cars with sensors to send data to their servers. These data will be analyzed by the companies and the customers will be sent status of their cars like refilling your gas, servicing your car, changing your tyres and so on.
2. Companies manufacturing home appliances are going a step ahead of just controlling and monitoring the temperatures. Refrigerators equipped with sensors will now use your Wi-Fi to contact the local store and automatically order whatever is needed to be restocked and have it delivered.
3. Some companies leverage IoT for improving employee experience and safety. A UK based Oil Refinery Company called Marathon gives their employees a wireless multi-gas detector helmet that tracks exposure of harmful gases and alerts them.
4. Agriculture is a sector which is technologically aback than the rest of the lines. But Monsanto is a company that has leveraged IoT in agriculture fields for detecting the soil fertility, crop yield and other critical metrics. With this data across the years, they could determine the best suited soil for the crops and the right time for plantation under what conditions.
5. Google’s driverless cars are unimaginably smarter than we think. They talk to each other on the move and realign, organize, park, locate and track other cars on the way. They also send data to the service centers and monitor the health of your cars.
A survey rolled out to the big companies around the world who are already using IoT in their business resulted in some whooping numbers on various metrics.
1. 57% companies said IoT was driving the revenue growth
2. 43% voted that IoT improved operational efficiency
3. 42% said that IoT enhances employee safety
4. 26% companies voted that IoT improved customer experience
5. 46% companies said that it optimized utilization of assets
6. 33% voted that IoT was automating their mundane tasks
These numbers are concrete examples which were obtained from the web to hold a talk with the executives of the company to implement IoT in the business strategy and improve the client satisfaction, employee experience and revenue growth.
The User experience team quickly analyzed the problems faced by the clients and employees and found the gaps where they can be improved which in turn would increase the revenue and optimize the workflow of the business. Being a large financial firm in the world, it is not an easy move to introduce a technology into the business model or the organization rather. The UX team came up with top 3 problems that could be solved for optimizing the business and reaping the revenue out of the IoT Strategy.
The UX team and the technology team came up with an architecture called “Internet of Business Things (IoBT)” which is connecting the business components or elements into the network and collecting data in the servers and creating a digital service for the clients and employees.
Problem 1
The Company gets High priority issues that need to be solved in a very minimum time span to avoid cost to the company or reduction in client experience. But the problem was that when the issues are mailed to employees when they are away from desks or not checking mails, there is a delay in the time taken for resolving the issue.
How they leveraged IoBT architecture
They installed IP configured 3 LED lights (RGB) under each team and configured them with the Remedy system. Whenever a new issue is raised in the remedy system and assigned to the team, the LED light would glow according to the priority. The Incident details will be sent to the Business phones of the teams too. There was a steady decrease in the time taken to respond for an issue which increased the client satisfaction index.
Problem 2
While joining the high priority issue calls, employees had a delay in joining the conference calls due to dialing in the entire bridge number and the passcodes. Sometimes it may go wrong which would delay the process by 3-5 minutes.
How they leveraged IoBT architecture
They simply connected the phones to the outlook meetings and made the IP Phones to fetch the bridge and passcode details from the meeting details during the time of meeting. The employees just need to do a single click on the IP Phones to join the meeting. Employee experience was drastically improved with this strategy.
Problem 3
Employees need to do some repetitive works across various applications to complete a single task. For example, when the employee is going on a vacation, he needs to apply for leave in a portal and then set his auto reply mail in outlook for the same dates.
How they leveraged IoBT architecture
They leveraged the concept of IFTTT for the internal applications allowing the employees to set rules across applications and automate the mundane work. This steadily increased the employee experience and productivity.
Strategic choices to make before implementing IoT in your Business
1. Which capabilities to pursue? – Monitor, Control, Optimize or Automate
2. Functionality: Embedded in the product vs. in the cloud?
3. Open or closed system?
4. What data to capture?
5. Change the business model?
6. Sell data to outside parties?
7. Expand product scope?
8. Reduce costs or increase revenue?
9. Increase the speed or efficiency of your business?
10. Improve customer or employee experience?
What did they achieve through IoBT?
The company experienced an acute,
1. Increase in Employee productivity
2. Increase in Revenue
3. Increase in Overall Client Satisfaction
4. Decrease in time taken for Issue Resolving
5. Awards for Business Innovation
6. New Clients and Opportunities
Oh wait! It is not complete without UX
Improved User Experience was the major underlying gain the company obtained through leveraging IoT strategy in the business. The Client and the employee satisfaction were the two key targets that were aimed on, which would obviously increase the overall revenue of the organization. The UX Team started with the thought to improve the user experience of the people and then tried to align the technology towards it. It should not be done the other way round – where you have the technology in hand and then try to align it solve the problems.
The more we connect, the better it gets.
