Smart Industry 1/2018

to a multiple retailer whose core
business focus is selling produce, as
cost will far outweigh the immediate
benefits. For businesses undergoing
digital transformation, rather than
investing in brand-new equipment
they should see if the answer lies in
the existing infrastructure. The data
that is an increasingly vital part of
many enterprises’ digital strategies is
already being generated – businesses
simply need to find how to extract it,
understand it, and release its value.
Using an IoT layer, the food retailer
could tap into the available data
locked within legacy machines. By
integrating it with supply chain and
merchandising systems, as well as
with the fridge control systems in real
time, the temperature of each fridge
could be automatically managed to
suit its specific contents. As a result,
not only is the energy consumption
reduced, but a higher quality product
can be achieved, resulting in a better
customer experience.
Likewise, within the food manufacturing
industry, IoT technology at the
edge can provide necessary insights
to monitor each stage of the process
when creating food in batches. Consistency
both of ingredients’ quantities
and environmental factors can be regulated
and the available data from each
stage of the process united to ensure
the highest quality, most profitable
end product every time.
When venturing into the world of IoT,
it is critical that businesses and their
technology vendor partners take the
right approach to ensure the longterm
success of their project. This
means taking a “business-first” stance,
rather than following the ”technology-first”
path.
Changing the mindset
There is a requirement for a mindset
shift across the entire IoT industry
that makes “Why?” the first and most
important question when defining
an IoT deployment. Too often the
purpose of an IoT project is defined
by the capabilities of the technology,
but just because a business can
achieve something with the solution
doesn’t necessarily mean it should.
For industries such as food retail there
is the opportunity to reap significant
benefits and efficiencies from adopting
IoT, but for fast-moving environments
with low-margin consumer
goods and high infrastructure costs, a
rip and replace solution to extracting
data is simply not tenable.
Closing stores or the suspending of
operations runs the risk of jeopardizing
customer experience, customer loyalty,
and brand image, undermining the
potential business value of the solution.
As demonstrated by the Cisco
findings, the value of IoT must be
apparent quickly and with minimal
downtime, or the project will quickly
fall by the wayside.
This ability to release value quickly
is fundamental to taking a businessfirst
approach and accelerating
the transition into digitization with
low capital investment and a high
return on investment.
Food for thought
Food retail is a good
example of an industry
with the opportunity
to reap huge benefits
by adopting IoT, but
replacing existing
infrastructure is simply
not an option for most
Instead of asking the question: “This
is the technology, what problems can
it address?”, the various stakeholders
should instead be considering: “This
is the greatest issue, how can technology
help?”
Businesses continuously face multiple
challenges, but it takes real insight
and understanding of the organization
and the industry to understand
which solution when applied to which
area will have the biggest impact on
core purpose and, if addressed, offers
the greatest reward.
Set to explode
It is predicted that the IoT market will
explode over the next ten years, but for
the industry to remain on this trajectory,
a “business-first” approach is necessary
and legacy equipment should not
be a setback to its fruition – it should
be at the heart of it. Many enterprises
have all the data needed to modernize
sitting unused in their current systems,
and now is the time to unlock it.
Vendors must work with businesses
to deliver sustainable, truly valuable
IoT deployments that offer scalability,
rapid deployment, and quick ROI.
There is a world of opportunity available
through the Internet of Things
when it is implemented in a way that
makes business sense, and by taking
full advantage of the existing legacy
infrastructure with an IoT layer, an
enterprise can efficiently and effectively
transform its organization in a way that
both supports and enhances its core
business purpose.
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