Page 6 - AeM_July_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Boon or bane: Sharing contextual data

via the Internet of Things

At the moment, IoT still focuses mainly on consumer- task of marketing. After all, only those who listen will
oriented products such as smartwatches and self-driving win the right insights to speak to their customers appro-
cars. In the long term, however, business-to-business priately and earn credit for it. The technical tools to
applications, such as in Industry 4.0 or digitized logistics, achieve this are all available, just not fully utilized by
will offer even greater potential. most marketing departments, yet.

In manufacturing, for instance, databased business mod- The Internet of Things (IoT), the intelligent networking
els are possible, in which the use of plants is billed ac- of devices and machines over the Internet, can create a
cording to availability. Currently, however, only a fraction global economic value of up to 11 trillion dollars in
of the data that is generated in the production process is 2025, claims the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Ac-
used. Similar trends can be seen everywhere and the cording to their report "Unlocking the potential of the
IoT trend clearly made an impact in the digital marketing Internet of Things, 90% of total value will benefit users -
industry. Sharing contextual data – location, users, de- companies that use IoT applications or consumers - for
vices, and applications that originate from IoT devices example through cheaper prices or time savings. In
and the personnel who use and manage them – already addition, the Internet of Things will soften the bounda-
enhance business insights significantly as it manages to ries between technology companies and traditional
give customers what they really want. At the same time, companies and enable new data-driven business mod-
new technologies allow us to listen to customers better els.
than ever, so that blatant advertising messages will
hopefully become a thing of the past. Listening to the “Achieving this kind of impact would require certain
customer and then drawing the right conclusions from it conditions to be in place”, McKinsey said, “notably
appeals to the zeitgeist and is seen by many as the main overcoming the technical, organizational, and regulato-
6 July 2017 - Internet of Things (IoT) & Wearables