International. IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has published a research study of 200 North American executives that reveals substantial year-over-year gains in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial companies.
Executives at the companies surveyed, from manufacturers to commercial contractors to oil and gas companies, collect more data from connected devices, integrate it with other systems in new ways, and make IoT data more central to their businesses.
The study shows:
Companies that collect IoT data in entire work cells or production lines rather than individual machine components or individual machines have increased by 17 percent. This enables more advanced use cases, which helps explain a 30 percent increase in IoT usage to support asset performance management.
Respondents who used IoT to monitor their customers' equipment saw a 10 percent increase, which could signal transformational approaches to field service management.
Despite these advances, the percentage of respondents who have integrated IoT data flows with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software remains at 16 percent. This reluctance can represent a barrier to leveraging IoT to deliver new business models or revenue opportunities.
"Enterprise IoT integration allows you to take incoming data from connected devices and use it to create business events in ERP," said IFS Chief Product Officer Christian Pedersen. "Software can present that data to humans or act on it. Think about the potential of IoT that is constantly transmitted to ERP through business logic, where artificial intelligence (AI) applications constantly learn and apply that learning creating new business logics. That's when AI will see the real breakthrough, and when ERP systems will transform dramatically, changing the way we think about them."
Antony Bourne, President of IFS Industries added: "IoT is a huge disruptor. But if industrial companies don't embrace digital transformation, their business is likely to be disrupted by more agile competitors. IoT helps companies transform their businesses, making them more efficient, allowing them to explore new revenue streams and fundamentally changing business processes. A key constraint is the lack of qualified resources with the ability to implement transformational technologies. Partners with expertise in both enterprise software and technology platforms can help overcome these limitations and identify a proven path forward."
The full study can be downloaded by clicking here.
