The Value Gap

IT and OT may value the strategic benefits of IoT differently, creating the Value Gap.

To the digital enterprise, IoT brings a number of key, strategic values. It is the primary data collection mechanism for physical infrastructure responsible for capturing device, sensor, and status data. This includes not just physical performance data but geo-location data and environmental data.

Where is this device located?

How is it performing?

Has it experienced changes in its environment (physical force, heat, cold, etc.)? The ability to know the status of every asset in real time is critical. Device data forms the foundation of the digital infrastructure, and can be leveraged throughout the supply chain, within manufacturing and distribution processes, and informs how and where a customer is using an asset. Customer usage data will become increasingly important as more assets are offered to customers with postsale services or even as an asset-as-a-service.

And yet, companies may not value IoT properly. When asked to rate the importance of IoT projects, only 27.2 percent of respondents indicated IoT was Critically Important to their business priorities.

Source: Futurum Research, Bridging the IoT Perception Gap, Survey of 500 IT/OT Professionals

Individually, IT and OT perceive the business importance of IoT slightly differently, with OT focused respondents having both a greater percent of Critically Important (29 percent) and Not Very Important (12.2% percent) responses than IT focused respondents.

Source: Futurum Research, IT/OT for IoT Survey, September, 2017 Source: Futurum Research, Bridging the IoT Perception Gap, Survey of 500 IT/OT Professionals

By industry, Media & Technology rated IoT Critically Import the highest (33.3 percent), while Public Sector rated it the lowest (23 percent). While the value of IoT is well understood in the Media & Technology, Banking & Financial Services, and Healthcare/Pharma sectors, we believe the importance to the Public Sector – particularly in areas such as smart cities and public safety – is very high and underestimated by survey respondents.

Value Gap - Bottom Line

IoT has the potential to bring vast amounts of operational and customer data to the table, yielding valuable and actionable insights in nearreal time. Yet, while a majority of organizations surveyed rate IoT as a Very or Critically Important driver of achieving business priorities, a third of respondents do not. There could be several factors at work here. It is possible that enterprises are still experimenting with IoT, and those initiatives are still in the test phase. However IoT, and in particular Industrial IoT, has been a core operational requirement for years in many industries, such as manufacturing, energy and utilities, and transportation. In this case, it may be that IoT initiatives are not correctly understood or categorized (ex: measurement and sensors as distinct from IoT). It may also be that IoT isn’t valued for the foundational role it can play in the capturing of data. If this is the case, the value of data, from the supply chain to the customer and the connection between IoT and business value must be more clearly understood and articulated—particularly within the operational side of a business.