The Internet of Things (IoT) already touches many aspects of daily life and impacts most industries, globally. With IoT, we have a world where smart objects are seamlessly integrated as part of a global network; and where smart objects interact with each other or the external environment, without human intervention, to deliver new services and improved processes. The scope for IoT is unparalleled – it’s been described as the new ‘Industrial Revolution’, and will impact on our lives as business leaders, employees, citizens and consumers. IoT can range from small consumer devices and applications to monitor things like health and fitness, to company-wide industrial monitoring and control solutions and even city-wide deployments that use many thousands of sensors to help citizens seamlessly use a range of integrated services across transport and social care.

Internet of Things is a key component of Digital Transformation allowing organisations to change the way they operate.  It allows businesses to anticipate and prevent service interruption through analytics and insight of how their assets are performing.  It enables governments to plan for the future and deliver smarter, cost effective and leaner services across many local and national departments.

The key to the value created by IoT is in collecting and using data from a myriad of connected “things”, as well as from other data sources within your organisation, to make better decisions and to enable new services. Creating value from data is key.

There are four categories of value which we’ve identified as being key to IoT adoption:

Operational Efficiency

  • Improved access to near real-time operational data helps to eliminate waste and use assets more effectively.

Optimising Supply Chain

  • Remote monitoring of assets helps to identify critical events and automate responses to them.

Enables Preventative Operational Models

  • Having access to a regular stream of event data enables new actionable insights that can inform operational and business decisions

Innovative Service Offers

  • As data from sensors and other sources are combined then these enable new data based business models for customers who can also benefit from the investment in IOT

Early adopters in each of these areas, like Amey are already starting to tap into the potential of IoT and the organisations that manage to navigate this journey will transform their relationship with their customers and citizens, plus how the operate their business.

The ability to derive actionable insights from legacy technology e.g. building management systems as shown in the Amey example is the first step towards transforming property management and finding value in having a ‘connected’ building. Such insights can be extended further with new sources of data from additional sensors, which can either be included in a new build or as a retrofit. Starting in the commercial market such innovations will ultimately form part of a new generation of domestic energy services made possible by the roll out of smart meters, new consumer energy storage and electric vehicles.

Realising the full value of IoT requires a business-led approach that focuses on creating financial benefit and competitive advantage by starting small with specific well defined use cases and proving the value before continuing to invest. CGI’s ‘start small then scale’ approach guides you through the steps involved, and helps you to define and achieve your IoT objectives:

Discovery workshops and inspire sessions show you what’s possible, and focus on specific business challenges.

Business-driven use cases prove the value of the technology. They’re delivered in a manner that can scale up to meet the needs of a production deployment when successful.

The insights from the initial use case can help to identify where further value can be derived from the additional data sources and other devices. These can then be built in and scaled.

This iterative approach helps you to develop a tailored roadmap that closely involves your people and processes as it’s rolled out.

Read our online flipbook brochure to find out how our expertise can benefit your organisation or contact our expert john.hicklin@cgi.com . Alternatively, take a look at IoT for Dummies, CGI’s informative guide to this compelling transformational technology.