In this new world of work, as enterprises reimagine their business strategy, new-age technologies like IoT, AI, ML and others are setting the pace for a digital makeover. From smart cities to smart manufacturing, IoT solutions are gaining adoption across industries. There is certainly no escaping the deployment of IoT solutions for any enterprise; a look at its importance across sectors and how technology must evolve.

Integrated IoT platform
Enterprises are moving beyond the integration of the technology to niche functions like supply chain management or production line automation. They are conscious of deploying IoT across the value chain to create better efficiencies and looking for a holistic solution and not just a point solution to the device, or the network or the application. They are looking at an integrated implementation or an integrated platform. Hence, it is vital for IoT to evolve and provide a full suite of solutions as a platform.

For instance, retail stores can leverage IoT to track footfalls and accordingly adjust the in-store conditions such as temperature settings or energy, gas, and water consumption. Check-outs can be automated, preventing long queues and lost sales. IoT can aid in smarter inventory management, reducing wastage and manual intervention in procurement. In sum, IoT will be a big game changer in maximising customer experience with optimised resource utilisation.

Redefining healthcare: The use of IoT in healthcare is expected to grow exponentially due to its tracking, identification and authentication, and data collection abilities. These are the kind of predictive and proactive healthcare tools that we need to be future-ready. IoT will unveil a healthcare ecosystem with redefined patient care, doctor interactions and hospital management.

Enhancing remote work and employee safety: IoT can play an instrumental role in minimising manual reliance. Municipalities are leveraging smart lighting solutions with minimised disruptions in service. IoT provisions for prompt servicing, centralised governance and orchestration of streetlights are spread across cities and this is picking momentum. Similarly, IoT solutions can also make working environments safer for sectors such as mining or power.

Transforming global supply chain: Supply chain management was one of the earliest use cases identified for IoT, yet its adoption was slow. With government-mandated limitations on resources and logistics, IoT-backed automation was the only oil that kept factories running. Enterprises need to reimagine human dependence on supply chain management to ensure employee safety. IoT will help enable this, while ensuring economies of scale are achieved, with multiple benefits like predictive maintenance of assets and raw materials or smooth management of inventory and logistics.

Reducing emissions: Increased IoT adoption means more data being sent to the cloud for storage and computing, and therefore additional energy consumption. To curb this, enterprises need to deploy edge computing capabilities on their IoT networks. Data processing at the edge reduces latency and strain on bandwidth, with faster analysis and insights-generation. Edge computing can also help in predictive monitoring of the manufacturing process to restrain hazardous emissions or cut down on wastage.

This is the best time for future-proof enterprises to identify where they stand in their IoT journey and fill the required gaps to create value for their stakeholders. The right digital ecosystem enabler, having a multi-tech expertise, can enable enterprises streamline these processes to unlock improved profitability and productivity.

The writer is vice-president – IoT, Tata Communications