Why Get on Board with the Internet of Things Now? (A Cheat Sheet)
Let’s say you work in a field service management role. (We’d hope, because that’s the ideal audience for this particular blog.) You’ve talked to colleagues, read some of our posts, and understand that Internet of Things (IoT) is a major factor in field service moving forward. But you still need to convince the ultimate decision-makers of its importance and benefits for your organization.
Where do you start?
Well, luckily, our team at FieldOne, from Microsoft, gives presentations all the time about IoT and field service management — so we have a couple of ‘cheat sheet’ resources you can use to sway the final decision-makers on your team.
For example:
This comes from a presentation we gave at Microsoft’s Converge EMEA Conference in November 2015.
It can be best used to answer the question of “Why now?” from a decision-maker in your field service organization. After all, business is all about competing priorities and the need for resources. Why make an investment in IoT now, as opposed to three years from now?
If you work in a very bottom-line driven organization (as many rightfully are), consider those final two bullets. You can lower costs while seeing potentially enormous economic benefits.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Now consider this:
‘Machine learning’ is a specific form of IoT, but the benefits on this slide can apply to IoT adoption questions as a whole. You can use this to help a decision-maker answer, “What’s the value proposition for us here?”
Consider some of the major concepts that jump out:
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Have better analytics
- Reduce service costs
Again, who wouldn’t want this for their business?
Now look at the value proposition for another subset of IoT, machine-to-machine:
Again, some similar concepts pop out:
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Have better analytics
- Have faster response times
- Reduce service costs
These are all typically things that decision-makers and senior leadership in your field service organization will want.
You’ve already taken a strong first step by reading this blog entry. But what’s next? Glad you asked. We have you covered there too:
One of the easiest ways to truly move forward with IoT is simply by contacting us; we have experience in the market (second-to-last bullet) on solutions in this space. We can help you with ROI, measurement, and vision as well.
IoT is a big step forward for your field service organization. There will be challenges and growing pains — as with anything worth doing in business, yes — but the potential bottom-line value can be tremendous.
Lean more about Field Service and IoT
