IoT & Asset Management

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the reliance of both businesses and employees on technology. This shift has significantly increased the demand to reduce or eliminate human interaction across various functions. As a result, the digital transformation that was already underway in nearly every industry has gained momentum—and the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a crucial driver of this change worldwide.

Smart, connected assets are enabling enterprises to use resources more efficiently while cutting costs. With real-time monitoring, businesses gain valuable insights into operating conditions, setting new standards for operations and maintenance. From manufacturing equipment and utility transformers to public transportation and electric vehicles, a wide range of systems are now being connected. Companies are increasingly recognizing how this connectivity can optimize performance, boost operational efficiency, and even create new revenue opportunities.

As we continue advancing in a more digitized world, IoT is becoming an essential part of every company’s business strategy. Knowing the location of your assets—and having access to any relevant or impacting information—will be vital not only for staying ahead of the competition but also for maintaining financial stability and ensuring business continuity. IoT empowers organizations to secure their assets and maximize their potential, resulting in greater efficiency, lower costs, and an improved customer experience.

What is asset management?

We can look at Asset Management in two ways: first, it is any system that monitors and maintains things of value, and it is also a systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets in a cost-effective way.

Saving money – and time – is the bottom line, but while tracking your physical assets – vehicles, equipment, animals, or IT devices, for example – helps you pinpoint where they are at any given moment, managing your assets means you are receiving vital information about, among other things, usage, maintenance, calibration, and security.

How asset management has evolved

Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, and long before geo-fencing goats or tracking vehicles in real time became a reality, the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University installed micro-switches on their far-away Coke vending machine and connected them to the department’s computer. This allowed them to see via their computers how many bottles were in the machine and whether they were cold or not.

Since that seminal moment, things started to happen: a toaster that could be operated via the Internet was created for the 1990 Interop tech show, the first webcam was demonstrated at Cambridge University, and in 1998, the flow and height of water in a connected water fountain corresponded with the rise and fall of the New York Stock Exchange in real time. While all of these experiments might have seemed like fun and games at the time, what was really happening was that the foundation was being laid for the myriad benefits IoT brings to our lives and our businesses today.

Traditional asset management models were inefficient and not nearly as effective as they could have been, particularly when it came to maintenance.

Take a factory floor filled with machinery or a vehicle out in the field. Prior to IoT, maintenance was going to happen in one of two ways:

• Reactive: Maintenance performed when equipment failed
• Preventive: Maintenance performed according to a schedule, risking a waste of money if done too early and unexpected downtime if done too late

Before IoT, asset management was pretty primitive, using siloed systems—lists or spreadsheets—to keep track of things. The result was often inefficiency and inaccuracy, and the process was labor intensive.

With manual asset tracking, very little information was available regarding how much, where, and when assets were used, making it difficult to predict a variety of factors, such as overcapacity. Additionally, security was labor intensive and resource heavy, relying on physical security guards—and often only the most valuable assets were secured.

Connecting your assets lets you know where they are at any given time, with real-time tracking offering useful insights and information that allow you to take immediate actions, such as performing maintenance as soon as a problem arises, long before it spirals out of control.

Supply chain logistics

If we look at the logistics of tracking the actual location of goods in your supply chain, previously it was complicated at best, and there were few opportunities to capitalize on what little knowledge was gained.

Along came IoT, and the myriad benefits when it comes to keeping track of your entire supply chain were clear:

• Reduce shipment delays and other disruptions by providing critical insights
  into supply chain processes
• Enhanced transparency into supply chain processes, decreased inventory
  write-offs, lower inventory holding costs
• Analyze product requirements and reduce or prevent inventory shortages
• Accurately track and trace products in different locations
• Data from connected assets enable supply chain operational efficiencies
• Optimize operations, including planning and resourcing.

All in all, legacy asset management relied on flawed and ineffective systems and processes that didn’t support efficiency and were cost-heavy. Manual record keeping was not just burdensome—it was also prone to errors, which could end up being not just costly but also dangerous.

With the development of cloud computing, businesses were suddenly able to connect and collect data, and then make sure that data flowing from devices was being analyzed in real time—thus providing valuable insights into the business.

Industry Value

Putting asset management and IoT together is pretty much a marriage made in heaven—and it’s only getting better, particularly with the advent of 5G. IoT asset management solutions can provide companies with a wide array of enabling capabilities, including real-time alerts, customer insights, and predictive analytics.

Data collected via connected assets can, depending on your business, assist with critical decision-making, loss prevention, and timely maintenance, while also streamlining production and maximizing efficiency. In short, revenue is maximized, and costs are kept under control.

If we look at asset management today, it’s clear it delivers value across a multitude of industries, including:

• Utilities
• Healthcare
• Security
• Transport/public transport
• Building automation/public infrastructure
• Logistics
• Industry

As companies continue to evolve and become savvier, the competitive landscape is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. And it’s not just individual companies that are changing—entire markets are shifting. This makes it more vital than ever for companies to begin their IoT journey.

Cellular & LPWA: Connections and Growth Europe

	2 years	5 years	2018	2020	2023
Health	90%	281%	2 562 295	4 859 363	9 760 947
Industry	330%	943%	1 825 113	7 841 964	19 032 877
Automotive	43%	105%	82 981 219	118 986 273	170 510 672
Agriculture	405%	1321%	5 299 768	26 759 532	75 312 255
Total	71%	196%	92 668 395	158 447 132	274 616 751

Essentially, the number of connected assets is growing across all industries and markets as enabling technologies—including hardware, connectivity, and cloud—have reached attractive price points. The value of a well-thought-out IoT strategy will bring huge benefits to businesses, and those benefits will continue to grow over time and with increased maturity.

IoT Asset Management The Biggest Benefits

• Supply chain optimization
  By adapting production based on information on when assets arrive
• Regulatory compliance
  By providing proof of how the asset is being used and how it is performing
• Loss & theft prevention
  By real-time asset tracking
• Maintenance optimization
  By receiving status updates of for example vibration, number of times used, temperature etc, maintenance needs can be predicted
• Enhancing customer experience.
  By dealing with asset errors before the customer experiences a problem
• Security optimization
  By centrally managing access control and distributing in real time to access control points
• Workflow optimization
  By knowing were needed tools and equipment are located

The ability to connect assets and feed information into a central system gives your organization the power to turn data into powerful insights. These insights, in turn, lead to compelling and transformative actions, with many industries shifting their focus toward servitization—moving revenue streams from product sales to service sales, where IoT plays an instrumental role in this process.

IoT action plan: strategy, tactics, execution

It’s no secret that every business faces unique challenges, and incorporating IoT is no different. But don’t think you need a grand strategic vision to get started—as we like to say: crawl, walk, run. Every journey begins with a single step.

It’s important to know your vision and what you want to achieve, as well as to understand your business objectives. Equally important is recognizing what can be connected and monitored, how you can benefit from your IoT solution, and the role of various components in your business—such as preventive maintenance—in the overall picture.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Would knowing the location of your assets add value to your business?
  In a construction company, for example, tools are often rented out, and the company renting them may not know precisely how many tools have been rented, by whom, or where they are located. Fully utilizing your IoT solution could mean providing a service to an asset, with location tracking key to field services.
• Would knowing the status of your assets add value to your business?
  This information could provide valuable input when managing the lifecycle of your assets, as well as support moving from products to services—such as selling the number of tons lifted instead of renting a crane by the hour.
• Is maintenance part of your product life-cycle, costing both you and your customers?
  What if you could perform maintenance remotely instead of sending out field service teams? Even better, how would you like to move from calendar-based to predictive or proactive maintenance?
• Do your assets have software that could be remotely updated?
  Knowing that you can update software securely and decide when to update in order to minimize business impact could save you many sleepless nights.
• Do you want to assign access to your assets to particular people or organizational roles?
  For example, a forklift company may enable different speed levels based on employee competence.
• Would information about how and why your customers are using your product help you understand their needs better and aid in product development?
  Knowing how often and how the product is used is just the start. Often, connected assets provide unexpected insights—by having these hard facts, you gain valuable knowledge about your customers that allows you to further develop your product.

What we’ve learned

By working closely with our customers, we have seen them create value on many levels through connecting their assets. These assets can be found on-site, such as in their factory or warehouse, but even more frequently, they are located elsewhere—like in a fleet or infrastructure. With LTE-M now a reality, remote, mobile, and hard-to-reach assets are much easier to control and manage.

The needs of use cases across areas such as fleet management, logistics, healthcare, and Industry 4.0 are clear. We have developed not only a strong offering on our own but also a robust partner network that helps us meet all connectivity and related service needs. We do this so you can focus on your unique situation, knowing that no single business is the same.

For example, many asset tracking solutions rely on battery-powered devices, which means optimizing power consumption is critical. This is where LTE-M can be highly beneficial—we provide customers with solutions that help save battery life and, ultimately, money.

When you need to act quickly and become proactive, we provide the troubleshooting tools necessary. For instance, if a device starts signaling excessively, it likely indicates a problem with the device or network, even if it seems to be working fine from a user’s perspective. Having the right tools and support to resolve such issues quickly is key to maintaining control over your deployment. Additionally, our world-class professional services help you optimize your solution, scale when ready, and address challenges efficiently.

Depending on the use case, data traffic can vary—from tracking solutions that transmit very limited data to preventive maintenance solutions where each asset sends large amounts of sensor data during operation. Without the right pricing strategy, this can strain your bottom line, so having a solution that maximizes your connected assets’ potential cost-effectively is crucial for the future of your business and expanding deployment.

Security is another major challenge when connecting assets. Unauthorized access to mission-critical or any other assets is a risk you want to avoid. An ideal solution secures bi-directional IP traffic between assets, the backend system, and other stakeholders such as third-party field service organizations. Additionally, VPN (Virtual Private Network) solutions can be easily managed by you, enabling quick business scaling while addressing complex security concerns. Our professional services team can help you explore various security options to determine the best fit for your needs.

What we see is that by providing you with tailored solutions for your business, you can create value through connecting your assets—whether by cutting costs, increasing efficiency, or generating new services. We also offer the support you need by saving resources, enhancing security, and reducing the risk of failure.

Conclusion

It’s clear that IoT is revolutionizing how we do business, especially when it comes to asset management.

Managing your assets with IoT offers an excellent solution to numerous business challenges, including cost control, security, performance optimization, uptime, and process improvement. The data collected can also be used to optimize design, functionality, business models, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Working with a partner who is willing to collaborate with you to find the right solution tailored to your needs is key to a successful IoT deployment. It’s important to develop a strategy that maximizes the benefits of your deployment while helping you grow your business.

Use Cases

Managing connected assets is applicable to nearly every industry, and we work with many companies using IoT not only to connect their assets but also to gain enormous value from data-driven insights. If you would like to learn more about how IoT can help you manage your assets, please visit our website.