Written by Each year, billions of more products are connected to the Internet. That leads to the development of more products in the IoT space. If you are considering IoT implementation within your organization or developing a new connected product, read on to be sure you aren’t making these five extremely common mistakes (and the reason so many IoT implementations are failing).
Are you taking advantage of economies of scale?
Instead of looking at the current value, look long-term. Mistakes are commonly made here by implementing a product that can make an initial profit, but doesn’t allow for any scalability. This can be caused by a number of factors, including:
- Material availability and cost
- Production needs
- Infrastructure
- Technical support
- Internal operations needed to scale the product effectively and efficiently.
Are you ignoring the cost factors involved in implementation?
Of course, you’re looking at the cost of the product itself. Maybe even in customizing it for your organization. But if you are one of the 54% of companies that are implementing IoT because of cost factors, are you paying attention to the cost vs benefit of implementation?
The opportunity cost of the training time it will take your team to learn and adjust to a new model is just one of the many cost factors associated with IoT implementation.
This isn’t to say that the value can’t be there. But a major mistake is ignoring the business value that is absolutely necessary to understand before implementing. Mistakes are made when the focus is on the product, or the specific abilities of the product — not the benefits and value those benefits bring.
Is the problem you are solving still the right problem?
We all know how quickly things change in every industry — and that is multiplied infinitely within IoT. Are you planning for regular assessments?
By including frequent checkpoints along the way, you can avoid reaching the end of your development and realizing that the problem you were solving no longer exists.
Make sure that you’re giving yourself flexibility and have enough self-awareness as an organization that you can course-correct if necessary.
Is your timeline realistic?
Implementers frequently make the mistake of planning a timeline based on best-case scenarios. While this might make getting approval a quicker process, an unrealistic timeline means that the IoT implementation will be unavoidably more expensive.
Not only this, but if you are promising an unrealistic timeline, you’re offering unpredictability in a position where predictability is key.
Are you ready to tolerate possible failures?
By ignoring the opportunity for failure, you are setting yourself up for one of two things:
- Not allowing space for better products
- Complete failure of the project, not just the product, because there was no ability to adjust as needed.
IoT Implementation
So, tell us: Have you considered these questions or are you on the brink of making one of the most common five mistakes when implementing IoT?
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