Putting customers at the heart of M2M industrial router
As I’m sure everyone is aware, we are in the middle of a Digital Revolution. Yet as an industry we have this strange tendency of taking amazing, life changing & truly transformational innovations & trends and giving them strange names and odd descriptions! We talk about the connecting things and regularly use terms like machine to machine or M2M (Industrial Router). Yet the value for us as a business and for our customers isn’t around the connection but the benefits that it brings to help people in the everyday lives.
In life as human beings we are constantly searching for Meaning and Value. And it’s through this customer lens that I want to look at some of the most exciting developments in this digital revolution. Namely, “Big Data” and the “Internet of Things” or through my chosen lens, “Big Value” and the “Internet of Meaning.”
Why is this important? It isn’t just about changing the words but it’s about adopting a customer centric approach rather than one that is technology focused. It enables us to look at the real customer benefits that we can bring to life to help customers in this new digital world and not to talk about the technology or number of connections.
The traditional way of looking at the industry is by reference the 50billion potential connections, a possible $1.2trillion opportunity and the 25% year on year growth. Now these are big, impressive numbers without a doubt but let’s approach this in a different way and view it through our customer lens. What really inspires me and stirs my imagination is how all this maximises some very different statistics. Think about what this means for you and me – the number of seconds each and every one of us has available each and every year – 31 ½ million give or take! That’s an impressive stat in itself but now times it by 7 billion people and counting. Think about how much data we are capable of creating and what we could enable. Now that’s truly a big number which means every second really does count.
So the issue becomes not how much data we produce - how” big” the data is if you like - but how we use it. How can we use the potential of an increasingly connected world and the rich data that it provides us with to ultimately add value and meaning to people’s lives?
To create the “Internet of Meaning”, we need firstly need to make it simple for customers so that it becomes a catalyst for adoption and enjoyment. It’s about building relationships, NOT enabling transactions. To do this we need to deliver benefits that the customer values. And they need to be accessible by everyone. So that it benefits the daily lives – at work and at home.
Big data sounds complicated. It sounds vast. It’s conceptually challenging to envision how this new world will add meaning and value. We need to provide a personal touch, the reassuring feeling that the system and the sensors are serving and understanding the way we work and interact as people in an intelligent way. And we need to broaden accessibility so that it really does achieve its potential. Accessibility will be a significant factor in both adding value to the network - the greater the crowd, the greater the wisdom - and for guiding the sustainability and healthy development of the “Internet of Meaning”.
In Conclusion... It’s a truly exciting time and we are in the middle of a digital revolution. Everyone agrees that the scale will be huge. What's coming is a perfect storm where the systems, software and capability come together to build a connected and more social world. More and more people and devices are getting connected every day. Devices are getting smarter, costs are going down and availability is going up. Applying a customer lens, success for us all will be measured by how much we enrich people’s lives by delivering Meaning and Value.
