10 reasons your business needs an IoT strategy

August 31, 2019

Basically they all come down to Competitive Advantage. And what business doesn’t want and need that?

Better product/service performance
Better customer service
Growth opportunities
Operational effectiveness
Quality
Customer intimacy
Risk reduction
Compliance
Evidence base
Proactivity

CDL have been leading the way in remote asset monitoring and Industrial IoT for over a decade now. We believe in using IoT to help our customers drive their business. We focus on machinery control and management, and the built environment monitoring. Our experience with thousands of installed systems across 15 countries informs our comments below:

Better product / service performance

If you don’t know how your products or services are performing in the field [real time, with data analysed and trends and learning fed back to you, and alarms for when pre set parameters are breached] and one of your competitors does… then who has the advantage? One of our US customers in the temporary climate control field tells us of several multli $m contracts they have won as a result of the IoT solutions CDL supply them!

Better customer Service

Traditionally Water Utilities have had gaps in the monitoring of water quality before it reaches the consumer, resulting in customer complaints, fines from regulators and reputational damage to big brands. Using IOT devices from CDL that have ultra low power consumption and run on battery packs, an instrumentation business now fills this gap for the Water Utilities, with local, near to consumer, monitoring of water quality. Just one example of how many CDL customers use IoT to deliver superior customer service, and gain competitive advantage themselves.

Growth Opportunities

Often growth opportunities come about from adding two or more new elements together. So it was for a logistic firm, handling high value sensitive goods and needing to be sure they were handled correctly. The use of an IoT solution from CDL gave them the competitive advantage to be able to sell the proposition to their market as a value add

Operational Effectiveness

A major client of CDL operates in the Damage Restoration business, repairing properties after escape of water incidents. Using CDL internet of things solutions they can monitor the performance of machinery and the drying of buildings remotely, reduce the duration of jobs by spotting underperforming equipment, reduce the number of unnecessary technician visits and therefor vans, fuel etc. Another client has remodelled their business to reduce technician visits to site during commissioning of equipment. Machinery settings can now be changed remotely using their CDL solution. This not only delivers operational efficiency, but superior customer service, and environmental improvements too.

Quality

The integrity and strength of concrete structures depends amongst many factors on the curing time and temperatures. Using sacrificial sensors and CDL IoT monitoring systems allows engineers to know, real time and continuously, rather than spot check and derive information on these critical parameters. Another example of competitive advantage from using Internet of Things technology form CDL

Customer Intimacy

Imagine the different relationships with your client if you can talk to them from shopfloor level to boardroom about information that benefits them; or perhaps give them access via your own branded IoT portal to their data and trends. Or just send reports at the right frequency showing how their assets are performing. How would that change your relationship? Who would win the next piece of business coming from them?

Risk Reduction

In many construction situations – Excavation, piling or demolition for example there are requirements to monitor shock levels to protect from damage to nearby infrastructure. The CDL NanoVIBE product is becoming a defacto industry standard for continuously monitoring vibration levels, and, if thresholds are exceeded then capturing the data and sending alerts to the nominated responsible people.

Compliance

Many industries have specific compliance requirements and all industries have basic health safety and environmental needs for compliance. A FM company managing infrastructure for an NHS trust needed to monitor performance of a variety of measures [temperature, humidity, dosing chemicals] to prove compliance with their SLA’s and avoid contractual fines. IoT solutions from CDL allowed a simple easy to deploy and cost effective solution to monitor, alert and provide evidence.

Evidence base

Most commercial disputes could be resolved if only there was enough evidence. A plant hire company reduced the number of their customer disputes about billing for time usage when they fitted IoT monitoring systems from CDL to their portable chillers. Customers claiming units as “off hire” when they were actually still using them were eradicated, and disputes over the length of time used were easily resolved.

Proactivity

Using Internet of Things solutions is a cultural cornerstone. It says “We will invest in technology to help our staff and our customers. We will get a ROI on that. We will be proactive. We will embrace change and rise to the challenges to be better”. CDL believe in this, and if it resonates for you, we would love to explore how IoT can become part of your winning strategy.