Recommendations
There is no easy fix to address the gaps identified in this survey and improve the effectiveness of collaboration between IT and OT for IoT-related initiatives. However, several actions can balance the perspective between these two complementary teams. Before any successful technology investment should be made, it is critical that companies understand the purpose of such an investment and align it to strategic goals. As men-
• Critical Infrastructure Investments: Having a robust data management strategy with a system that allows ubiquitous access to all relevant customer and system data across databases is key to realizing successful outcomes of IoT projects. Furthermore, access to analytics in real-time will gain in importance, as organizations want to respond and make decisions faster. This requires analytics tools and hardware infrastructure at the edge that can handle high-density workloads with the software capacity to extract critical insights that IT and OT can act upon rapidly to maximize items such as system uptime and customer requirements.
• Shared Goals: Traditionally, IT is focused on enabling infrastructure, OT is focused on operational performance, and Line of Business organizations are focused upon customers. These teams must share a common set of business goals that place the customer first, while implementing a programmatic and scalable infrastructure.
tioned throughout this paper, companies must continue to think about customer experience and operational success at each step of their IoT deployment. With these two critical factors in mind, there are a set of key recommendations that we believe organizations should adhere to in order to maximize their IoT Investments and realize the greatest collaboration between all parties involved in IoT projects.
• Sharing Risks and Rewards: By sharing in both the risks and rewards of IoT initiatives, both teams will have an incentive to improve collaboration and ultimately drive innovation and business value for the entire organization. This includes ensuring that both teams recognize the end goal is not their individual performance, but that of the entire business.
• Linking IoT to Business Outcomes: Both IT and OT must overcome the traditional silo’d approach to the deployment of technology and the ultimate value it drives. From a budget perspective, this requires funding for IoT initiatives to be broken out of individual silos and linked directly to the business outcomes it can enable, whether that involves operational efficiencies and cost reductions or increased customer adoption and revenue.
• Increasing the Customer-first Perspective: In the end, executive management must cultivate a customerfirst and collaborative mindset within their organizations, asking the question, “How can we improve to better serve the customers?”
INFORMATION VS OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY 20 COPYRIGHT © 2018 FUTURUM RESEARCH
