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Revolutionizing B2B Monetization

Data-Enriched Monetization

Monetizing the Internet-of-Things: Challenges & Opportunities

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With advances in technologies such as 5G, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence, there has been increasing interest in leveraging the Internet-of-Things across the business world. The interest extends far beyond technology organizations, entering multiple silos of business.

In transportation and logistics, we see autonomous vehicles and freight, delivery with unmanned vehicles, and advanced traffic control. Healthcare firms are utilizing remote health monitoring and diagnostics to treat patients through telemedicine. Industrial robots, factory automation,and data-leveraged maintenance and inspection increase the efficiency of manufacturing facilities.  Security has become stronger with intelligent surveillance, faster emergency response, and smart cities.

These example industries are just scratching the surface. There are a plethora of other business types that have yet to fully embrace the Internet-of-Things. But using IoT devices to improve efficiency and capabilities is only the start. What organizations really need to understand is how to monetize IoT devices and infrastructures to create additional streams of revenue. 

Challenges

Before these sectors can monetize an IoT stack, they must first identify, plan for and overcome challenges. There are a host of operational challenges that must be accounted for, including the following:

  • Multiple platforms: Businesses that deliver multiple platforms or services must design a system of data collection that accurately tracks and unifies the data. This allows the data to be analyzed in the bigger picture instead of only as individual business units. 
  • Disconnected services: For organizations offering multiple services as mentioned above, it can be beneficial to merge those under a single package for clients utilizing more than one service. This requires complex planning and execution. 
  • Control over devices: In many cases, deploying IoT devices means handing the technology over to clients. Organizations doing so need to be able to maintain a level of control over those devices so they cannot be altered or hacked to disrupt tracking. Businesses also need control over devices to protect against unlicensed use. 
  • Tracking and provisioning: If an organization is to charge for usage of IoT devices and data, there must be an advanced system in place to track that usage. The system must be able to identify each unique user and their license ID, which  devices their license has access to, what level of speed, bandwidth and data volume they have access to, and more. 
  • Data Quality: IoT clients expect highly accurate data, so data quality and integrity is a must to ensure customer trust.

In many sectors, managing all of this information is too large of a lift. Designing an IoT data infrastructure in-house can be costly and inefficient. This is because such an undertaking can  draw attention away from primary business pursuits. As a result, team members end up ignoring the areas where they bring the most value to instead work on a project in an area which they are not experienced. What many businesses need is a solution to monetize data from an experienced data monetization partner. 

At BluLogix, we serve as that experienced partner. Utilizing over a decade’s worth of experience in data management, we partner with companies across various industries to design systems for data monetization. From transportation management to drone zoning to billboard advertising, we help companies monetize vast networks of IoT devices. 

Now that we’ve identified some challenges in deploying IoT devices and networks, we can move on to the benefits. As we discuss these opportunities and benefits, keep in mind that ultimately, each seeks to increase revenue by either producing additional streams revenue or reducing expenditures or the cost of operations.

Benefits

Innovation and Improvement

Every organization is constantly seeking to improve their products and value proposition to gain a competitive advantage in their industry. With the data mined from IoT devices connected to products and services, companies are able to understand exactly how customers interact with their services. In turn, they can then modify and innovate products to more accurately serve their clients’ needs.

Operational Efficiency

One of the main benefits of utilizing IoT devices and data is the increased efficiency they offer. With devices deployed throughout the field for businesses such as energy providers or transportation and logistics, these businesses can capture usage down to minute detail. With this level of insight in hand, businesses can refine how they operate machinery or equipment to reduce wasted resources. 

Proactive Maintenance

Connected IoT devices mean real-time monitoring of remote equipment, vehicles, and infrastructures. Instead of the laborious and often too late process of inspecting and servicing equipment periodically, organizations can stay on top of maintenance needs and address them before more severe intervention is required. This can eliminate down time and preserve the lifetime of expensive equipment. 

Monetization of Data

Modern times are often referred to as the Information Age. That’s because the amount of data available and the power of that data allow for significant advances in technology and efficiency. This is what makes data so valuable and it is why not monetizing data is a serious missed opportunity in terms of revenue. 

The data a business can mine from IoT devices is not only internally beneficial. There are countless firms that are willing to pay top dollar for highly accurate, highly informative data. If a business is not harnessing the power of its own data, they are passing up a lucrative stream of revenue.

Let’s dig in even more! Check out our webinar on How to Monetize Your IoT Service Offerings in 2021.

Process Management for IT Service Providers

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Channel partners are expanding their cloud portfolios, often with multiple cloud service provider solutions.  As service providers onboard, separate order and billing processes are enabled for each.  As the list of service provider solutions grows the management of multiple order processes and disparate data for billing grows in parallel.

We are seeing four levels of maturity in dealing with this problem.

  1. Project Management Software: Manage tasks within a project management software application managed at the customer level.
  2. Workflow Management: Workflow is a set of human processes to be completed, assigned to at the order level, within a Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform or billing platform.
  3. Process Automation: Use of business rules and integrations that automate a business process at the product level.
  4. Orchestration: A unique combination of both human processes and automation to complete a process at the product level, order level and/or customer level.

This blog discusses how these systems differ

Project management software is a list of tasks and task assignments to be managed and completed within a specific timeframe for a specific customer.  Templates can be pre-defined based on product type or solution ordered by the customer.

Workflow management brings project management capabilities into a PSA or billing platform, where the order is initiated.  Templates can be pre-defined based on product type, often called “processes”, however, are manually assigned to the order and manually executed.  It is important to recognize there is no direct correlation between the product and the workflow.  It is simply built in project management functionality.

Both the project management software and workflow management manage the many tasks associated with complex business processes, however, they do not reduce the number of tasks need to complete a process.

Reducing the number of tasks requires Process Automation.  Process automation manages business rules, notifications and data associated with the order of a particular product.  For example:  Place the order in a “pending” status until provisioning is complete then update the status to “active” or send a request via api for a software id and once received generate a notification to a CSR to contact the customer. Process automation can reduce tasks, and resources to complete tasks, as much as 75%.

Orchestration combines process automation and human processes. Most importantly these processes are generated dynamically based on customer information, order information and product information.  No one process is necessarily like the other because the tasks, whether automated or not, are determined by multiple factors relevant to the most successful outcome of the order.  Orchestration also has the ability to manage processes based on multiple sources of external data.  In this case data is mediated into a single record and associated to a customer, product and order. The process can then be triggered based on this data.  One example many are familiar with is the generating a customer notification based on usage against plan.

Hope this helps put things into context for those struggling with process issues.  To discuss how BluLogix can help, contact us at sales@blulogix.com .