IoT has certainly proved itself in every aspect. Once a theoretical concept, IoT has become a priority for global enterprises, regardless of size and industry. C-level executives are considering IoT as an important strategic move in order to drive value. While some already have some kind of IoT implementation in execution currently, others are planning to approach one in the coming years.
However, even with this global adoption and experienced IoT development teams, 75% of the initiatives fail. Of these, 30% cannot even make it beyond the POC stage. This failure reflects immensely on the company’s bottom line, causing their strategies to fall flat. Clearly, there are a lot of aspects businesses miss out on anticipating. Let’s talk about them here and how your business can create the right roadmap to drive the results, you are looking for.
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What Are the Common Causes that Lead to Failure of IoT Development?
While there could be multiple reasons that lead to the failure of IoT projects, let’s talk about some of the prominent ones.
1. Unwillingness to Estimate Project Complexity Accurately
Businesses generally fail to estimate the project complexity accurately. This is specifically true about the estimation of the initial investment. While they only account for hiring and going on with a custom IoT development company, they miss out on considering aspects such as setup, consultation, support, and more. The cost shoots up as they encounter these challenges during the IoT development process, causing their strategies to fall flat.
2. Not Having Clear Business Goals
You need to decide where you want to reach in order to plan the route. While IoT brings in a lot of information and data, you need to know where you want to use the data and analytics. Success comes with knowing where to want to implement this data collection and analytics. By not having clear goals in mind, companies tend to invite failure.
Also Read: IoT Consulting Services: Everything You Need to Know
Avoid IoT Development Pitfalls: How to Create the Right Success Roadmap for IoT Development?
The success of IoT projects depends on the right development roadmap. Let’s see how you can make one.
Step 1: Begin by Highlighting Your Business Objectives and Goals
You need to properly document your challenges and how IoT will help you with them. The idea is to understand the loopholes and clearly define the data you need to collect and analyze. This allows you to appreciate the implementation scale and determine the anticipated return on investment. You might consider your long- and short-term goals and what are the best ways to achieve them.
Let’s understand this with an example.
Matt is the owner of a retail outlet that sells women’s clothes and accessories. After facing a tough challenge from the digital stores, he opted for an eCommerce development company and took his store online. However, despite SEO activities and offering the best technology, he could not drive good traction to his website. His marketing strategies failed miserably, and so he ended by bearing the loss. He is looking to invest in IoT solutions to boost his marketing activities to drive customers and increase sales. Let’s help him with the factors we mentioned above.
- Problem Statement: Inefficient marketing activities and low sales
- Goal to Achieve:
- Short Term: Bring customer insights to drive sales with targeted marketing activities
- Long Term: Automate marketing activities and use customer data analytics to engage customers, boost loyalty, enhance the in-store experience, and better strategize customer acquisition and services.
The IoT Solution
With IoT implementation, Matt can use legacy system modernization to upgrade his existing retail and eCommerce store. It will help him understand the customers better and help him create targeted marketing strategies. For instance, he can acquire GenZ customers using marketing languages that appeal to them. Similarly, he can talk to older customers in a way they love the most and place his brand on their map.
Going further, he can use this data and more like what customers are looking for online and which products are more in demand currently to boost in-store experience and make his campaigns more targeted.
Step 2: Market Research for Use Cases and Implementation Examples
You need to understand where IoT fits more in your industry and business. This helps you broaden your long-term goals and make the most of your investment. For instance, if Matt has a better idea about the popular products among your customers, he can plan your supply against demand and ensure you are ready to fulfill customers’ expectations.
Similarly, there are a lot of retail stores that can do with IoT. To know more, read our blog: How to Develop IoT Application for Automatic Shopping in Retail Store.
We have also covered other industries and their use cases in our IoT development blogs which you can find here: IoT development Blog archives.
Step 3: Find the Right Custom IoT Development Services Provider
IoT development entails a lot of aspects. As a business, you must have the right hardware and software infrastructure to implement your IoT project. The key is aligning your initiatives with your organization’s short-term and long-term goals.
You can have the right technological acumen to accommodate these requirements by deciding to hire an IoT development company.
They don’t only offer the technical expertise required for IoT app development but also enrich your journey with IoT consulting. They work with you to understand what goals and challenges you have in mind. At the same time, they also uncover the possibilities you are missing.
A best-in-class IoT development company will bring the following USP to the table:
- Years of experience in IoT development services
- Hands-on experience in building IoT solutions for supply chain
- Quality reflected in the past products
- Positive reviews and feedback from the previous clients
- Overview and expertise of their IoT projects
- Additional USPs in IoT development
Step 4: Begin with PoC: Product Design and Development
Comprehensively jumping into the overall IoT implementation can be daunting. It adds up to the initial cost and increases the chances of failure. You can begin with PoC and expand the efforts gradually. For instance, in the above example, Matt can rather go on garnering IoT to strategize for targeted marketing. He can later grow on to improve the IoT development project to include IoT in other aspects like understanding market trends, knowing customer behavior, and more.
POC development includes the following stages.
Stage 1: Discovery of all the IoT development requirements for your business
Stage 2: SRS creation with scope freezing
Stage 3: UI/ UX development
Stage 4: IoT hardware and tool selection
Stage 5: Hardware/ software development
Stage 6: QA and testing
Stage 7: Bug fixes
Stage 8: Deployment
Also Read- IoT Software Development: A Complete Guide
Step 5: Consider Learning Curve and Train Your Team
IoT development often fails because enterprises miss out on the cost associated with team training. Therefore, make sure you consider these aspects and strategize for the learning curve associated with them.
Got More Questions or Still on Fence?
At Matellio, we offer these organizations to put the best foot forward in their way of digitalization. Global brands hire IoT developers from Matellio for their excellent understanding of mobile, web, and custom ERP development that helps them fill organizational gaps with the right IoT development services. Our state-of-the-art product design and development lab is well equipped to create experiences that enable you to optimize the processes and harness long-term value from your investment in IoT development services.
We pride ourselves on our IoT development capabilities, which include:
- Infrastructural competence to create cutting-edge IoT hardware and software products
- Experience in building IoT products for diverse industry verticals
- Certification in the futuristic technology stack
- Secure data management policies
- Support for management of legacy and advanced devices
- High-performing analytics and data collection
Let us know your goals with IoT implementation, and we’ll build the right IoT team for you to achieve them. Share your requirements right away.
