For AI + IoT to be of benefit to businesses (and for you to get sufficient budget to invest in it), it must be able to demonstrate tangible, bottom-line benefits for your organisation.
Much like AI + IoT’s cousin, ‘Digital Transformation’, it offers a world of promise when applied in the right way, to the right problem. Far too much time is spent talking about the technologies involved, rather than what business problems you’re trying to solve (the use case) and what you’re going to achieve (the outcome) by solving it this new way.
The reason AI + IoT isn’t discussed in this way is that there’s advantages to vendors to sell you the kit, rather than solve your business problems, and there’s an awful lot of kit to be sold - some of which is likely to be of limited business benefit. With big players’ solutions, you’re likely to need multiple modules and then have to pay someone to stitch them together for you, before then configuring any solution to your business. This can be much more complicated than they let on and if you’re only using 30% of each of the modules that you’ve been sold, you’re not just adding complexity, but spending far more than you need.
AI + IoT will change the world, but slowly and only once it’s been tried and tested - it is not going to happen overnight. If someone on a production line can see a problem and fix it by pressing a button on the console, the case for investing huge amounts of money in a remote-access equivalent typically doesn’t stack up. However, when you’re using that same cloud-based technology to improve the efficiency or productivity of the manufacturing line a substantial business case can be made. The second option is harder to achieve and takes longer to implement, but it makes for a very compelling opportunity.
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