In the past few weeks, we have explored the tremendous benefits the Internet of Things can bring to your business. From sensors on livestock that alert farmers to problems to smart machinery indicating when maintenance is due, IoT data improves operations and decreases costs – sometimes even saving lives. You will face some obstacles implementing IoT technology, but careful planning can help you avoid them.
- Invest in the best data encryption solution. Security is the IoT’s weakest point. IoT sensors provide data about machinery, raw materials, shipments, inventory, etc., and transmit this data over the internet. Therefore, detailed information about every aspect of your business is broadcast across the internet. You must ensure that your data is secure as it travels across your company.
- Understand that you may not be able to do it all at once. Cost is another issue for IoT adopters. If you want to deploy sensors on every machine in your organization, every acre of farmland, and every vehicle in your fleet, you will have to invest in a lot of sensors and technology to collect and store all of the information generated. You may need to start smaller, with the area of your business that will yield the quickest return, and then add more projects as budgets provide.
- Make sure your IoT components – hardware, software, connectivity – are scalable. The program will evolve over time, adding more streams of data, and you do not want to recreate the foundation. Think about what you need today and plan for tomorrow, and build an open, integrated hardware and software platform with a real-time network that can scale with your business.
- Choose the right data integration and analytics tools. The IoT provides continuously streaming unstructured information. Are your systems prepared to read and use this data at the speed, quantity, and quality it is generated? You gain the most value from IoT data when you combine it with data from other sources to create a complete picture of your business. Can your systems collect, integrate, and analyze disparate data from different systems?
- Make sure your communications network can handle all of the new data sources. If your internal network is already taxed, how will it handle adding hundreds or thousands of continuous data streams? You may need an upgrade, or to reconfigure your network, to make room for all the new data.
- Choose your sensors with battery life in mind. IoT sensors collect, process, and transmit data continuously. Each of these steps takes power. Sensors hardwired into machinery can recharge, but many mobile or remote sensors cannot. You want to choose those sensors carefully to ensure that you won’t be replacing them constantly because they consumed all available battery life.
Eka Analytics integrates data from IoT sensors, ETRM, CTRM, CRM, spreadsheets, external market feeds, and other systems, collecting, integrating, and analyzing data to provide a comprehensive, accurate picture of your business. Eka Analytics' self-service analytics provides the solution you need to answer your most important questions.
