Nearly 70% of Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives stall a the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage, according to a recent study by Cisco.
The study also revealed that only 26% of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success, while a third of all completed projects were not considered a success.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” said Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IoT and Applications, Cisco. “But there are plenty of things we can do to get more projects out of pilot and to complete success,” he added.
Cisco said that the “human factor” is key for the success of IoT initiatives. Human factors like culture, organization, and leadership are critical. In fact, three of the four top factors behind successful IoT projects had to do with people and relationships, the study said. These key factors are collaboration between IT and the business area of the companies, a technology-focused culture, and IoT expertise.
In addition, organizations with the most successful IoT initiatives leveraged ecosystem partnerships most widely, Cisco’s study said.
According to the study, the top five challenges across all stages of implementation were time to completion, limited internal expertise, quality of data, integration across teams, and budget overruns. The study found that the most successful organizations engage the IoT partner ecosystem at every stage of the IoT implementation plan, which implies that strong partnerships throughout the process can smooth out the learning curve.
“We are connecting things that we never thought would be connected, creating incredible new value to industries. But where we see most of the opportunity, is where we partner with other vendors and create solutions that are not only connected but also share data,” said Inbar Lasser-Raab, VP of Cisco Enterprise Solutions Marketing. “That shared data is the basis of a network of industries – sharing of insights to make tremendous gains for business and society, because no one company can solve this alone.”
Almost two thirds of all participants in the survey said they are using data from IoT completed projects to improve their business, the study revealed. Globally the top three benefits of IoT include improved customer satisfaction (70%), operational efficiencies (67%) and improved product/service quality (66%).
Another key finding was that 64% of surveyed decision-makers agreed that learnings from stalled or failed IoT initiatives have helped accelerate their organization’s investment in IoT.
