The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most exciting and talked about topics in digitisation. Its impact is felt every day, in the way we work and play, as enterprises and people experience the transformative power of connectivity.
Enterprises and organisations, realising that with each day they become more and more technology focused, speak of wanting to boost investment in information technology to generate value from their data.
To date, IoT projects have been implemented in various industries, small businesses and large organisations, to varying levels of success.
In a survey conducting by Cisco, an American information technology and networking company, the results of IoT’s difficulty in implementation speak for themselves; only a quarter of IoT projects are successful.
At a panel entitled “Deploying IoT at Scale” at the Smart IoT conference held at ExCeL in London in March 2019, panel experts gave insights into the key success factors for enterprise IoT projects. The most important listed were, obtaining senior stakeholder backing, having a strong and multi-role leadership team, fine tuning and managing the project through its implementation, and deploying the best expertise available.
For IoT projects to gain momentum internal buy-in by stakeholders is necessary. Large and even small projects bring many different stakeholders from across the organisation to the table, each with their own business goals. Unifying the team behind any project is crucial and that requires having a strong leadership team. A strong leadership team will bring together the different levels of senior stakeholders of the business, manage expectations, and take the lead in mobilising resources and expertise for the project. Staffing the right expertise on an IoT project is challenging.
The organisation, which doesn’t have the skills and expertise to launch and scale IoT, will need to look at either direct hiring, outside sources of knowledge, or bring a consultancy on board.
