By the end of 2019, more and more enterprise IoT projects are expected to be finished. Some of them are in the stage of proof of concept while there are some projects which ended badly. The reason behind this is that project managers were late to understand that they were fast-tracking the implementation of the IoT projects without thinking much. As a consequence, they were left to regret not consulting and analyzing properly.

Different industries and businesses use the internet of things for various applications, however, IoT fundamentals are unchangeable. Before implementing an IoT project, consider the following factors.

Cultural Shift

Organizational and cultural shift emerge as one of the leading issues in the internet of things. For example, take the example of a German cleaning manufacturer: Kärcher. The company’s digital product director, Friedrich Völker, gave a brief explanation of how the company was able to address this issue during its release of an IoT-based fleet management project. He explained that their sales team was struggling in marketing and advertising the software and virtual offerings of the internet of things as they dealt with their customers.

After some time, the sales department refrained from concentrating on a one-off sale. They instead focused their efforts on fostering relationships with the customers to get input on the ongoing performance of the IoT equipment. As a result, they achieved success.

Initiatives related to the internet of things are usually included in the digital transformation of companies which often needs adoption of the agile-based methodology along with the billing procedures for offering support to either pay-per-use based billing or subscription-based customer billing. Therefore, always commit to the efforts of change management in the organization and make use of the agile approach.

Duration of IoT Projects

Businesses need to understand that the implementation of the internet of things needs a considerable amount of time. There are examples where the IoT implementation from the development of the business case to the commercial release took less than a year—the quickest time was 9 months. On average, expect an IoT project to run for at least 24 months.

There are many reasons for such a longer duration of IoT projects. For instance, sometimes the right stakeholders do not have the buy-in. In other cases, there can be a technical problem such as not using an infrastructure which provides scalability support.

Profitability cannot be expected for the initial years; many companies are concentrating on the performance of their internet of things solutions instead. Thus, you have to ensure that the stakeholders are patient and create smaller successes which can provide satisfaction to both the senior management and the shareholders.

Required Skills

Development of end-to-end applications in the internet of things needs a developer to have an extensive set of skills such as cloud architecture, data analytics, application enablement, embedded system design, back-end system integration like ERP, and security design,

However, IoT device manufacturers do not have much experience of the technology stack in the internet of things like AMQP or MQTT protocols, edge analytics, and LPWAN communication. Studies indicate that there is especially a wide gap of skills in the data science domain. To address these concerns, adhere to the following.

• Map the gap of skills in your IoT project.
• Make sure that your employees become the jack of all trades .i.e. do not limit them with a single domain—instead encourage a diverse skill set, especially with a focus on the latest IoT technologies.
• Fill up your experience gap with the help of IoT industry experts so their vast expertise and experience can help you to provide a new level of stability in your project.

Interconnectivity

In this age, users are quite casual with the use of technology; they download and install an application on a smartphone within a few minutes and begin using them without any other thoughts. IoT adopters believe that IoT devices will provide a similar user experience.

On the contrary, one of the most time-consuming aspects in the development of the internet of things solutions is the protocol translation. For instance, in one case, the internet of things implementation for an industrial original equipment manufacturer (OEM) required almost 5 months to design all the relevant and mandatory protocol translations. It was only after such a prolonged time period that the IoT applications and equipment were able to function seamlessly. Therefore, make sure you can create a standardized ecosystem which falls in the scope of your industry and use case.

Scalability

Not many people report it but a large number of IoT devices can generate scalability issues. When such an issue arises, device manufacturers cannot do much as the device is already released and sold in the market.

For instance, once a construction equipment manufacturer designed tidy dashboards for the remote monitoring of machines. After some time, the IoT infrastructure was revamped such that predictive maintenance and the hydraulic systems’ fault analysis could be performed. At this phase, it was first realized that the data model was not supported by the required processing capacity. Similarly, there were instances in which the processing power was weak and restricted the manufacturer into adding different functionalities.

While you should always begin small, your vision and planning should be grand from day one. Design your IoT with a modular approach and challenge your data model and hardware design.

Security

Often, security is cut off from the development of IoT devices. This is because many consider security as merely an afterthought while embarking on a mission to create IoT technologies. However, device and data security have a prominent role in the development of the internet of things development.

For instance, some manufacturers of Connected Medical Devices use the services of an ethical hacker. This hacker looks for any possible security loopholes in the IoT project. To do this, they use a wide range of strategies for rooting IoT equipment, lift, penetrate, and alter its code.