Your IoT journey usually starts with just one or two use cases, but for large enterprises, there will likely be dozens of IoT use cases you’ll want to address over the next few years. Will you be able to add new IoT applications without needing multiple vendors? Can your IoT vendor enable you to build and manage your own IoT applications if you want to take over and/or white-label in the future? Is the vendor hardware/connectivity agnostic and consistently updating their technology stack? It’s also critical that your chosen vendor is a healthy business that will be around for the long-term, so is the vendor a small startup with limited runway or a growing business with stable cashflow?

IoT requires new internal skills; 24% of IoT initiatives fail due to a lack of the right resources and knowledge. To build these internal capabilities, how do you find out where the gaps are on your current team? For those gaps, how do you determine which skills you’ll need to hire for directly and which can be outsourced? If you plan on hiring to build your internal capabilities, how do you bridge the gap in the meantime so you can move fast and not be left behind by your competition?

Security is top-of-mind for businesses adopting IoT (97% are concerned about security). This concern is justified; the combination of hardware devices, network connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and application software means that there are many attack surfaces for bad actors. So how do you ensure that each layer of the IoT technology stack is secure? Can you regularly patch and update each layer of the stack to maintain security over time (e.g. over-the-air updates to devices)? Is there strong user authentication at all layers?

When you’ve proven ROI and have decided to scale beyond a pilot, the sooner and smoother the business-wide roll-out, the better. However, there are several questions and challenges when implementing across your business. Are there upfront CapEx requirements? Who will be performing installation of infrastructure (e.g. gateway installation, attachment of devices to assets, etc.)? What processes will need to be updated to incorporate the new technology and workflows? How will you train your employees - are training materials already available or will you need to create them yourself?