Today’s businesses are experiencing greater competition than ever before. With the rise of e-commerce and the ease and convenience of travel, the world is a now much smaller place, inviting more businesses to vie for consumers’ attention. To remain relevant in the minds of customers and develop a competitive edge in business operations, enterprises will need to craft a creative strategy, harnessing the latest technological tools.
Fortunately, several technology trends have emerged in the past few years that, if leveraged correctly, can propel businesses forward.
The increase of 4G LTE infrastructure across the world has been integral to the increase in technological tools for business empowerment. Offering wide range and high-powered connectivity, LTE facilitates the exponential growth of connected devices. Regardless of their industry in question, businesses can take advantage of the Internet of Things in order to capture a larger market share.
Here are just three ways in which the IoT can provide business leaders with a competitive advantage:
- Streamline the workforce: Across industries, leaders and employees alike spend too much of their working day on tasks that are necessary, and yet tedious or repetitive. Tasks such as the manual counting of inventory. Thanks to the IoT, these kinds of jobs can finally evolve. Many tasks workers to transfer to more fiscally rewarding projects.
- Increase preventive maintenance: The fastest and most affordable way to perform maintenance — whether on a fleet of service vehicles, office infrastructure or the product itself — is to deal with it before a serious issues arise. While regular maintenance saves both businesses and customers money, the time taken to inspect each item can be a vast undertaking. Embedding 4G LTE chipsets into devices can provide real-time alerts for when an issue requires attention. For internal assets, this means that the relevant employees can be directed to work on the job immediately; if the item is in the possession of a customer, early identification and a speedy response can increase customer satisfaction and retention.
- Gain insights for value-added opportunities: As connected devices are increasingly deployed, they can be used to gather incredible amounts of data that can be tracked via a platform on mobile devices or desktops. Standing alone, this data could provide information on how efficiently the item is working. However, that same data becomes even more powerful when cross-referenced with data from other devices in a business’s connected network.
The prevalence of 4G LTE networks will provide innumerable opportunities for IoT business applications. As the technology continues to evolve, so too must businesses in order to effectively harness the full potential of the burgeoning IoT space.