Turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) can make your business smarter and more efficient and it’s easier than you might think.
It’s a simple fact, but smarter businesses do better. The smartest businesses are more efficient, more targeted, and they rely on data to make the right decisions at the right time. But, how do you get smarter? How do you get the information that you need when you need it most? The answer, in many cases, is through the Internet of Things (IoT).
In the most basic terms, the IoT refers to any device that’s connected to the internet. More specifically, when we talk about IoT for busineses, we mean connecting systems to the internet and using additional internet-connected sensors to gather important data.
Take, for example, a manufacturing facility, where the production line reports faults instantly for quicker recovery. Or a farm where a farmer knows the real-time status of soil conditions or the location of animals. As you’ll see on the pages that follow, Wales is one of the leaders in rural and whole-city IoT, using specially designed Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) technology.
All of the examples we’ll look at here generate what is arguably the most valuable element to any modern business: data. Being able to see what happened when, and track the minute details of how a business or organisation works is the first step to even greater efficiencies.
But IoT isn’t just about what you can use to make your business better at the point of operation, it’s also a way of re-examining the products and services that you sell. Can you make life better for your customers by making products and services internet enabled? Or are there new products/services you can launch that take advantage of new IoT technologies? Rather than being the domain of large tech companies, IoT opens up possibilities that can benefit small and medium-sized businesses too. You’re only limited by your creativity...