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Seventy-five percent of IoT projects are not fully successful due to a number of factors, including a mismatch in preparedness and the targeted time to market (TTM). As per , IoT projects deserve a more mature strategic roadmap to fill the gaps at various stages of their development life cycle.

Although new entrants in the business benefit from the already tested market scope, they still face issues while keeping the TTM in control.

The challenge with the IoT market is that consumer demand outpaces enterprise readiness to produce at the same scale. Brands commit their arrival to consumers and stakeholders but lack the vertical accuracy to build a stronger foundation. Consequently, ROI suffers. found that for an average product, a delay in the launch by more than six months results in 33% less profit. Imagine the fate of IoT products that sway in development for years!

However, other organizations have done many things right, and automating the journey to keep TTM in check is one of them. Here’s what you can learn from them.

Choose the right ERP and workflows

First things first – embrace an . It helps in tracking task progress, ensuring operation visibility, minimizing downtimes, and eliminating delays of any sort. How to start with that? Choose the right ERP tool and write workflows. From simple communications to development tracking and delivery management, utilize ERP systems as far as possible.

Through workflows, these systems integrate people, processes, and system landscapes, thereby providing an aerial view of the entire organization. Unless you are already using an on-premises system, you should always start with a cloud ERP solution. The ERP solutions are usually within the budget, secure and most likely integrates production plants, sales & distribution, marketing, vendor management and others.

Automate sourcing

IoT development is a laborious project involving electrical, mechanical, software, and middleware verticals. Furthermore, these are directly dependent on the availability of technical expertise, functional expertise, tools and components, and manufacturing expertise. Unless you have these metrics covered, finishing within TMM will be far-fetched. What makes it more convoluted is the crucial step of building the IoT prototype.

Now imagine developing all these skills to meet on-demand requirements. That’s complex and in all honesty, impractical. In the tug of war between achieving TMM and accurate development, most enterprises end up making a mess simply because they wanted to do everything in-house. The IoT industry has grown this far with the help of the collaborative efforts of outsourcing functions.

Try following a hybrid team structure wherein the junior roles go to the outsourced partner while you retain senior or other decision-making roles in-house.

Such an approach helps in two ways: first, you earn ample time to work on strategy and second, the time saved on skills development is huge. To find the , utilize social networks (especially LinkedIn) or dedicated marketplaces.

Conclusion

TTM and agility are mutually dependent on each other. While agility provides the necessary smart roadmap to achieve go-to-launch, TTM provides a milestone to curate an efficient agility strategy. After locking your business model and before starting the development, break down the lifecycle into releases and the releases into phases and the phases into milestones. An automation mindset takes you closer to your launch through a secure, seamless, and scalable model. Ignore it at your own peril.