Zebra Technologies Corporation has revealed the results of its inaugural ‘Intelligent Enterprise Index’. This global survey analyses where companies are on the route to becoming an intelligent enterprise, how they are connecting the physical and digital worlds to improve visibility, efficiencies and growth.
Globally, 48 per cent are on the path to becoming intelligent enterprises, scoring between 50-75 points on the overall index. Only five per cent exceeded 75 points. In comparison, Asia Pacific respondents scored above the global average, with 51 per cent of those polled scoring between the 50-75 points, but merely two per cent were above the 75-point benchmark that qualify them to be considered an ‘intelligent’ enterprise.
The Intelligent Enterprise Index measures to what extent companies today are meeting the criteria that define today’s intelligent enterprise. Some of the criteria include Internet of Things (IoT) vision and adoption plan, as well as business engagement in developing a return on investment for IoT. The criteria were identified by leading executives, industry experts and policymakers across different industries at the 2016 Strategic Innovation Symposium: The Intelligent Enterprise, which was hosted by Zebra in collaboration with the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) last year.
“An ‘intelligent enterprise’ is one that leverages ties between the physical and digital worlds to enhance visibility and mobilise actionable insights that create better customer service, drive operational efficiencies or enable new business models,” said Tom Bianculli, chief technology officer at Zebra.
“This is a journey for enterprise organisations, so we wanted to see where most companies are in the process. Clearly, many are still forming their IoT strategies, but we are seeing segments that have identified targeted use cases and are aggressively deploying solutions.”
The framework of an Intelligent Enterprise is based on technology that integrate cloud computing, mobility, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to automatically ‘sense’ information from enterprise assets. Operational data from these assets, including status, location, utilisation, or preferences, is then ‘analysed’ to provide actionable insights, which can then be mobilised to the right person at the right time so they can be ‘acted’ upon to drive better, more timely decisions by users anywhere, at any time.
Asia-Pacific key survey findings
- IoT vision is strong and investment set to increase. In APAC, 38 per cent of companies spend more than $1 million towards IoT annually, and 80 per cent expect that number to increase in the next one to two years. In fact, 67 per cent of APAC companies expect their IoT investment to increase by 11 per cent or more during this time. However, 39 per cent of companies today have not executed on their IoT plans or do not have any plans at all. Although only 36 per cent currently have company-wide deployment, it is expected that 65 per cent will have it deployed company-wide in the future.
- Customer service is driving IoT. Seventy-one per cent of companies claim the largest driver of IoT investment is improving the customer service. In the future, increasing revenue (54 percent) and expanding into new markets (53 percent) are expected to be the largest drivers.
- Business engagement is top of mind, but culture should be given more consideration. Eighty-one per cent of companies have a method in place to measure ROI from their IoT plan, and 73 per cent have IoT plans that address both the cultural and process changes necessary to implement it.
- Many companies lack an adoption plan. Fifty-four per cent of companies expect resistance to adopt their IoT solution, yet don’t have a plan in place to address it. Only 27 per cent who expect resistance, have a plan to address it.
- Companies keep employees informed, but there is room for more. Approximately 83 per cent of companies share information from their IoT solutions with their employees more than once a day, of which half of these employers share in real or near-real time. However, only 34 per cent provide actionable information to all employees, and information is provided either via email (69 percent) or as raw data (67 per cent).
Survey background and methodology
- The online survey was fielded from 3-23 August 2017 across a wide range of segments, including healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation and logistics.
- In total, 908 IT decision makers from nine countries were interviewed, including the US, UK/Great Britain, France, Germany, Mexico, and Brazil. Of these, about a third were from the APAC markets, including China, India, and Australia/New Zealand.
- Eleven metrics were used to understand where companies are on the path to becoming an Intelligent Enterprise, including: IoT Vision, Business Engagement, Technology Solution Partner, Adoption Plan, Change Management Plan, Point of use Application, Security & Standards, Lifetime Plan, Architecture/Infrastructure, Data Plan and Intelligent Analysis.