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IoT Pipe Dream? How Ready Is Your Company?

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The Internet of Things (IoT) may eventually change how your business interacts with your customers and clients.

A Forrester Research predicts 42% of the global population will own a smartphone by the end of 2015. With mobile trends growing, IoT now gives businesses the ability to connect more of their data across digital channels. Learn how mobile technology should be implemented.

If you’re unfamiliar with how the IoT technology mind shift may fit into your business strategy in the coming years, think one thing: smart connectivity.

What is IoT?  

If you ask any IT tech what exactly is IoT, you’ll likely receive many different answers from smart thermostats to wearable technology. Simply put, IoT is connecting all electronic devices you come into contact with throughout your life. If it has a power source, it’s part of IoT.

For example, you’ve probably heard of Nest Labs (a Google subsidiary), inventors of the Nest WiFi Learning Thermostat. Their smart thermostat not only learns your favorite heating and cooling preferences but also can be adjusted remotely with a mobile APP.

IoT and Big Data

A recent Forbes article outlined how businesses will benefit from IoT. Specifically in the area of big data management. Instead of focusing on merely selling products and services, some companies see IoT technology as the gateway to develop new revenue sources using their data as solutions.

So how does your company capitalize in IoT? We recommend starting with a deep analysis of how you interact with your customers. Are there better ways you can service them using data trends? Chances are good you’re not maximizing the value of your data analytics.

For example, consider the agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere. As early adopters of the exponential power of data, they integrated IoT technology into their business years ago becoming agricultural consultants who also happen to sell tractors.

Does your business monitor large data sets? If so, you can harness these data resources to provide better incite how your customers use your products or services. Think more about solutions than technical jargon.

Essentially, IoT is about helping people interact with all things powered to make their lives easier.

How Soon Will Your Company Be All In On IoT?

There’s been debate whether or not consumers are ready to invest in connectivity products. Although Nest has become the industry leader in smart thermostats, they did so because they filled a gap in the residential home heating industry. Therefore, finding untapped markets is the best approach.

Pinpoint Your Market

How do your clients interact with your products? One key component to pinpoint is if you can monetize your data into new product features to enhance how they use your services. Research is vital to growing your plan.

We advise evaluating your current business model. Then develop a data analysis formula to cull out trends your company can rebrand as new services for your end users.

 

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The Top Trends for Small Business Tech in 2013

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As spring approached this year, new tech trends for small businesses are starting to emerge.  Well, maybe not new, but there are some strong indicators that this will be the year for smart devices and big data.

Big Data

Sir Francis Bacon once said that knowledge was power.  It was true then and it’s true now.  Small business now have more access than ever to cloud-based analytical tools that help them dredge up useful knowledge from the sea of data out there. A study released by Intuit showed that access to data will increase 40-fold in the next decade.

This is important because that means consumers have an even more powerful flow of information coming their way.  As our information shifting habits evolve so will the tools to analyze what, when, where we are searching.  That is the trick that the small business must learn: how to best be present yourself on the web.

Smart Devices

The time is now for businesses to make their websites mobile friendly.  On personal note, I walked into DSW shoe store and all the sales representatives had iPad.  They were all able to log onto the store’s website and look up stock information, place orders, and show different styles.  Like the cash register, smart device will help people on the floor increase efficiency.

 

As the nation slowly recovers from its economic pitfalls, small businesses will need to work ever harder in this slippery world to stay on the curve.  As in the past, technology will lead the way.

IT Service Trends for 2013

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Each year it sees like business processes, even for the smallest of enterprises, become more deeply enmeshed with technology. Here are three trends you’ll want to stay on top of this year.

1. Devices. Technology research firm Gartner predicts worldwide spending on devices—including PCs, smartphones, tablets and printers—will jump 6.3 percent to $66 billion in 2013, after only growing 2.9 percent last year. That’s especially significant since Gartner also points out the prices of devices like tablets are falling fast—it means people are going to be buying a whole lot of them. Smartphones are also on the cusp of overtaking PCs as the way most people get online. Questions about bring-your-own-device policies, company-owned computers and tablets, and accessibility of work systems from phones and tablets are bound to grow, and IT management companies will need to have answers.

2. The Cloud. Gartner also says the global market for public cloud services rose 20 percent in 2012 to $109 billion and it will grow to $206.6 billion in 2016. In particular, this looks like the moment for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the type of cloud service that allows companies the maximum flexibility in designing their own systems on remote servers. IaaS will grow from faster than other sorts of cloud computing in coming years, according to Gartner. Migrating data and infrastructure to the cloud is going to be big business for IT service firms.

3. Big Data. This one is bound to be on trend lists for many years to come, but 2013 will surely see increasing focus on the management of the ever-growing mounds of information piling up on corporate servers. Already, major IT companies have whole divisions devoted to figuring out how to make sense of reams of customer transactions, social media interactions and security camera footage. These ideas are bound to trickle down and become something that businesses and IT firms of every size find themselves considering.