How IoT Apps Can Improve Customer Experience

The Internet of Things has been gaining momentum with each passing day. The technology has already paved its way to the smartphone territory in the form of mobile apps and connected devices. Driven by excellent mobile capabilities, IoT is deemed to have an inevitable impact on customer or user experience. It provides deeper connectivity to the world, and businesses can easily observe, understand, and analyze their customer behavior using an IoT app. Thus, most businesses seek the best IoT application development company to create a smart app and deliver the best customer experience.

Now, let’s get an in-depth understanding of how you can improve customer experience with an IoT app.

Provide Better Services and More Convenience

IoT allows businesses to offer the same or better services at a lower cost than their conventional methods. Using an IoT app, you can remotely monitor and maintain equipment without human intervention. Passing these savings onto customers in the form of better features and technology can help you provide them more convenience and maintain an impactful end-user experience.

Understand Customer Behavior in More Depth

Understanding customer’s behavior is one of the necessities for every business to thrive. It enables you to optimize your mobile app experiences to please even the most critical customers. Businesses that overlook this aspect are unlikely to retain a steady and repeat customer base.

With IoT development services, you can garnet relevant information, data, and statistics about customers using social media, mobile internet, video surveillance, GPS devices, and more.

Moreover, IoT-based apps provide ample benefits, including seamless payment process, faster shipping notifications, and easier return processes. By keeping track of users’ activities and keeping them updated with their return history, transactions, and more, can help you ensure the best customer experience.

Generate Better Research with Automation

In today’s technological landscape, IoT, AI, and data science have become indispensable. These technologies are sufficing the never-ending demand for data. Automating data collection via in-app surveys, feedback, browsing trends, and app usage gives profound insights into how customers think. You can also use your company’s own data to optimize the user experience and provide better-personalized communications.

Give Consistent Experience to Users

From the customers’ perspective, an IoT application is beneficial in many ways. You can ensure consistent customer experience by displaying real-time data about their product shipment, their health, and other activities. This consistency is invaluable for customers and will ultimately trigger positive feelings for your brand, creating a potentially loyal customer.

Besides, an IoT app allows you to take your business productivity to a higher level, allowing employees to focus on other tasks. As IoT facilitates real-time measurement, it is easy to monitor your business output at any time. Another benefit of IoT is that you can optimize your to-do lists and employee schedules.

Drive More Efficient Data Environment

Connected devices create an IoT ecosystem that generates a massive amount of data. To ensure the security of this sensitive and private information, encryption and safe storage have become a top priority.

However, in this age of edge computing, many IoT devices have eliminated the need for accessing data storage to generate, analyze, and report metrics in real-time. This faster solution provides users with better prediction, more accuracy, and more trustworthy experience.

Final Words

Internet of Things is rapidly becoming one of the key propellers for mobile app development. Businesses must embrace IoT to stay ahead of the curve as this technology will continue to open new doors of opportunities.

In order to leverage IoT benefits and drive business growth, every player in the industry is investing in IoT development services. Besides, if we talk about customer experience, you’re missing out on valuable data without deep and increased insights into their customer behavior. So, we recommend you to approach a reliable IoT application development company to create a high-performance IoT app and maintain consistency in customer experience.

How the Blend of IoT and Automation Can Empower Industries

IoT development is deemed a significant technological advancement in today’s industrial revolution. Businesses endeavoring to achieve better productivity and streamline internal operations are embracing this digital transformation.

Currently, most businesses strive to earn larger market shares but face challenges in creating innovative equipment and systems. IoT easily overcomes this hurdle by providing them high-speed and efficient systems that not only smoothly run their processes but also bring forth new revenue opportunities. Another challenge they encounter is the integration of these advanced systems for seamless apps. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and design engineers employ research and development (R&D) strategy or avail IoT development services to build low-cost solutions aligning with the ever-changing demands as well as trends.

Impact of IoT on Automation

The IoT has reached the next stage of business, where the focal point is integration and convergence across industrial verticals. Businesses seem more focused on the value and objectives as compared to the versatility of connected devices now.

Besides, the advancements occurring in IoT connected devices, software, platform, apps, and systems are the key factors to take note of. They heavily rely on the implementation of subsystems and modular components that can boost efficiency and eventually reduce manufacturing costs. It is also imperative for manufacturers to develop equipment with flexibility in design, reusability, movement, and interconnectivity.

IoT-enhanced Manufacturing

With applications in home automation, healthcare, automobiles, and other industries, the Internet of Things has become ubiquitous. However, with conventional methods, manufacturers have to cope with a lot of obstacles while developing smooth communications for enhancing the capacity as well as flexibility of analyzers, actuators, and robotics. To overcome these challenges, IoT-enabled industrial automation offers the integration of multiple commercial technologies across significant industrial apps, such as Programming Logic Controllers (PLCs).

Additionally, managing the massive amount of data is also one of the biggest concerns of digitization. Analysis and distribution of garnered data are essential for OEMs to derive predictive models. These models help end-users to minimize costly unplanned downtime. Besides using the cloud, manufacturers need to create an interface to read the data as well as present relevant information to the end-user. Thus, automation engineers partner with IoT developers for efficiently managing data.

How IIoT is Transforming Manufacturing

Due to the increasing cost-effectiveness of cloud technologies, IoT, operations, and maintenance personnel are relying on IIoT by integrating more sensors, intelligent controls, and smart switches. Industries need systems that can perform predictive analysis and figure out the projected time of servicing. Researchers believe that such abilities have the potential of considerably reducing maintenance costs as well as breakdowns of companies.

Enterprises are having a keen interest in incorporating three crucial elements of business – machinery, robotics, and human power. So, manufacturers are embracing the advanced systems to minimize operational efforts as well as manufacturing costs.

Furthermore, elevating the adoption of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems is a growth indication for traditional manufacturers. Conventional SCADA systems can’t communicate with logistics and operations. This is where IIoT comes into handy. Industrial IoT connects all aspects of manufacturing, including sales, operations, delivery, and inventory. These connections make equipment more autonomous, and above all, they can coexist with SCADA. Thus, it boosts integration and eventually replaces or incorporate data acquisition systems into IoT.

Four Key IoT Trends

According to Grand View Search, the global IIoT market is anticipated to reach approx. $933.62 by 2025. The need for real-time information remains the primary market propellant, and innovation is expected to drive IIoT demand. Most businesses focus on databases to monitor, categorize, and optimize operations. Emerging regions are also projected to witness significant growth with increased industrialization as well as the adoption of IoT over the coming years. Four major IIoT Trends are:

Data Intelligence

Continuously growing efforts to improve digital literacy is a significant trend anticipated to emerge in the coming future. Organizations invest in systems and programs to ensure the data collected is 100% accurate. Preferring data quality over quantity makes manufacturing companies ahead of the competitors. So, they are more likely to hire IoT development services to find a way to gauge the potential of major cloud platforms with the use of advanced tools.

Smart Cities

The rising demand for the connected environment, high precision location services, and autonomous technologies ensure the meteoric growth of IoT for smart cities. It not only boosts the adoption of IoT and IIoT but also improves infrastructure services and applications. Eventually, incorporation of these systems elevates the accuracy of parking systems, traffic lights, security systems, and more.

Business Collaborations

While innovations like flexible machines and systems and integration persist, businesses vigorously forge ahead. Most businesses engage in cooperative partnerships and business collaborations. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are expected to help businesses develop advanced capabilities and expedite their operations. Researchers suggest that M&A can bring analytics and digital capabilities under one roof and provide a competitive edge to the organizations.

Advanced Applications

The development of advanced apps, software upgrades, predictive maintenance, next-generation manufacturing, blockchain, and autonomous data centers also impact the manufacturing and automation engineering industries in the foreseeable years.

Final Words

Lack of data visibility and system upgrade costs used to be the biggest hindrance in most businesses until the advent of IoT. Also, data gathering and analysis is a time-consuming and attention-demanding task, which can disrupt routine operations. Incorporating IoT into industrial automation can resolve these problems and empower business verticals globally.

If you want to automate your processes by implementing IoT into your business, turn to our IoT development services. We will steer your whole IoT implementation journey right from ideation and consultation to development and deployment.

6 Critical Challenges of IoT Implementation in Enterprises

Internet of Things (IoT) is relatively a new concept for businesses, which is unearthing massive opportunities for them to thrive in today’s era. Various experts have various takes on what IoT stands for enterprises. However, the underlying notion behind IoT always remains the same – collect data, analyze it, and generate profound insights to expedite operations and yield benefits. It seems easy in theory, but IoT deployment is way challenging than said. We had to pour our blood, sweat, and tears to successfully deliver our first IoT project as an effective IoT implementation needs a lot of brainstorming, diligence, intelligence, and determination.

The following are a few challenges that we encountered during our IoT development and deployment journey.

Delivering Value to the Clients/Customers

The success of an IoT implementation is directly proportional to defining the problem statement clearly, and this is what most IoT development services providers miss out. The IoT development cycle requires a great deal of retrospection, but this gap of understanding the client’s problem statement is the biggest obstacle. Thus, IoT developers and consultants need to know what IoT can really bring to the table and figure out the KPIs to monitor and improve through an IoT solution.

Hardware Compatibility Issues                          

Data gathering majorly takes place through various sensors, PLCs, etc. which are further connected to IoT gateways to store and transfer data to the cloud. Enterprises must meticulously identify their machines, hardware, and legacy systems based on their business objectives. When there are legacy systems that don’t have integrated sensors and PLCs, the IoT implementation becomes a bit challenging. Incorporating external sensors is one quick workaround, but it won’t be foolproof, making this challenge more critical. Thus, understanding the machines and their compatibility issues before IoT implementation is highly recommended.

Data Connectivity Issues

This is probably the most overlooked issue since data connectivity has improved a lot. But still, there are some areas where data connectivity is a huge challenge in an IoT implementation. It involves how IoT devices work with the gateway and the cloud and what data format do they create. Most IoT gateways are compatible with Wi-Fi/LAN and GPRS, but legacy systems depend on RTUs, PLCs, and telemetry systems to generate data. So, a suitable edge layer is needed to translate transport and data format protocols and send data to the IoT-integrated platform. Defining and understanding the perfect combination of these protocols before IoT implementation will be beneficial in the long run.

Inaccurate Data Collection

Suppose the entire IoT implementation did not encounter any hurdles, and the system is running seamlessly. But due to an unexpected incident or the software inability to handle certain anomalies in run time, inaccurate data gets collected. This further results in inaccurate analytics that may not help in gauging the operations and making better futuristic decisions. As we said earlier that IoT is all about data collection, the inability to garner accurate data can be a significant challenge for the IoT developers as well as their clients.

Analytics Storage Space

The real potential of an IoT system is realized through profound, actionable insights obtained from the garnered data. This demands a high-performance analytics platform that can handle an enormous amount of data to be stored in the solution at a later point. Experts must take this aspect into account while devising the architecture of IoT implementation to engage data processing, cleansing, and representation. Hence, the system should be extensible enough to store real-time or predictive analytics so that the system never go out of space.

Data Security Issues

Due to ransomware attacks, businesses are concerned about data security. There are also possibilities of corporate espionage to gain intellectual property. Thus, IoT development services providers must ensure data protection by using a comprehensive governance model, which renders secure access to sensitive data and reports. This planning phase, which defines various data-related security policies, is essential for successful IoT implementation.

Conclusion

The abovementioned challenges are the key factors that influence the decision-making process of enterprises and potential clients for IoT implementation. A smart grid solutions provider successfully implemented an IoT solution by overcoming these challenges. The experts of our IoT development company helped them to devise and build a system that connects plenty of electric meters, handles and analyzes massive data and provides intelligent reports for making the best decisions.

How IoT is Revolutionizing the Energy Sector

As energy consumption is anticipated to rise by 40% over the coming 23 years, the demand for smarter energy solutions could touch its pinnacle point at that time.

Fortunately, there have been significant shifts toward energy management that are making this sector more efficient. From smart bulbs to autonomous offshore oil rigs, the current effect of the Internet of Things has brought a revolution in the entire energy industry. So, businesses belonging to this sector are exploring IoT use cases to improve their process automation and operational efficiency.

But what exactly has IoT brought to the table? How has it transformed the energy sector? And why businesses are investing in IoT development services and solutions?

Let’s try to find answers to these questions below.

To begin with, we will shed light on the advantages of the Internet of Things in the energy sector.

The IoT is bringing forth ample potential opportunities in the energy industry. The use of this technology in this sector is majorly driven by the need for more streamlined energy management. Yet, there are many other ways IoT can propel this industry. Some of them lie in the following:

Higher energy efficiency:

The increased control over energy consumption results in reduced waste, saved costs and enables the cutting of CO2 emissions, which makes the world a better place to live.

Reduced operational cost:

The IoT-enabled solution helps companies to eliminate operational and maintenance costs through system modernization and automation.

Increased power supply reliability:

The cost of power outages amounts to about $150B each year in the US, and around 25% of all industrial outages and interruptions were caused due to equipment failures. Taking this into account, IoT energy devices are deemed to be the panacea of these issues as they provide a more stable and reliable source of power.

New data sources:

In terms of gathering and processing of abundant data, IoT-enabled devices offer real-time insights into the system’s analytics and performance. These insights facilitate the implementation of predictive maintenance models and ensure the protection of the staff.

Top use cases of smart solutions in the energy sector

  • Industrial IoT use cases in energy production and management

Energy system monitoring and maintenance

IoT can be used to keep track of the number of system metrics, comprising performance, health, efficiency, and thus, facilitate the maintenance of the energy system. Be it a wind turbine or any other equipment, it might be challenging to detect the exact issues before the system crashes. Also, checking the problems manually is a very tedious and time-consuming process.

This is why companies are leveraging IoT sensors to examine the efficiency and outcome of their equipment. By gathering data from the sensors, they are able to implement the predictive maintenance models based on the IIoT platform. Thus, the organization could predict their maintenance needs in a better way, improve their efficiency, and lessen system downtime.

Process automation

IoT facilitated the development of entirely autonomous oil drills or energy plants. As said earlier, IoT sensors enable monitoring the system’s efficiency in real-time, and thus, automatically improve its performance using machine learning and AI.

Simultaneously, smart drilling tools can automatically modify the drill depth as per the external conditions using AI algorithms for the optimum results. It also eliminates the need for manually tampering the equipment.

Increased efficiency

Likewise, smart solutions can make power plants more productive and minimize waste. They also have the potential to increase coal power plant efficiency, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is obtained by leveraging fuel combustion, interpreting data from over 10,000 sensors, and adjusting the whole process to the specifics of burning fuel, i.e., automatically tuning the oxygen flow in the boiler.

Safety and disaster prevention

Smart IoT solutions can be used to prevent production accidents and improve operational safety. Organizations have been exploiting drones to detect methane leaks during the wildfire in Northern California. The drones transferred data to the unified control system, which resulted in automatic isolation of the leaks until the damage was overcome by the crew on-site. Companies have also been analyzing this method to inspect infrastructure daily.

  • Consumer-facing smart energy solutions and use cases

Smart meters

Smart meters directly connect consumers to the power station, thus facilitating two-way communication. It allows consumers to share real-time operation information with utility agencies. This helps the agencies to identify the performance issues and minimize the system downtime immediately.

These IoT energy devices can also detect and automatically separate the damaged part without affecting the performance of the rest of the system. Besides, the consumer can reap the benefits of smart meters in many ways such as:

  • Improved outage management as well as restoration
  • Reduced meter reading costs
  • Improved grid reliability
  • Meet regulatory mandate
  • Enable beyond-the-meter load applications
  • Decreased energy theft
  • Ameliorated retail operations efficiency
  • Enhanced network planning and asset management
  • Enable the integration of electric vehicles and distributed generation

Smart grids

Smart energy grids are the outcome of smart meters connected in a single network. This represents how IoT-enabled devices help in energy management in other ways.

For example, a company in North California launched a “self-healing grid system”, which is designed to automatically readjust itself in case of a power outage and, thus minimizing downtime.

Another example: Chattanooga, Tennessee, was one of the pioneers to implement and leverage smart grid solutions. This helped the community to save over 1.4M dollars in operational expenses during a single storm.

Furthermore, due to the positive impact of smart grids on the environment, it has been prognosticated that they will dwindle the air pollution by 30% over the coming 10 years.

Smart buildings

Smart IoT solutions can automatically detect and manage the humidity, heating, and lighting in a building, thus reducing energy consumption. These systems also make possible the zero-energy building concept, which says that the total amount of energy annually consumed by the building is equal to the amount of on-site created renewable energy. 

Sustainable cities

Akin to buildings, the infrastructure of an entire town can also be managed with IoT energy solutions.

From street lights to electrified public transport, the Internet of Things offers a plethora of ways to manage energy consumption and make urban cities more sustainable.

Vancouver, San Francisco, and Copenhagen are a few cities that have put considerable effort to reduce energy consumption, improve efficiency, and become sustainable.

Final Words

The Internet of Things has started ruling the energy sector by improving efficiencies. Considering the growth potential IoT has shown, it will soon be recognized as a boon for various energy organizations that ensure more resilience, care, and prudence than ever before.

If you also are also endeavoring to take your business to a next level, capitalizing on smart energy solutions would be a great idea, especially in an era where the global community strives to spend a more sustainable, waste-free life. To explore the opportunities hidden within the IoT landscape, you can tap into a reliable and experienced IoT development company.

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