Embracing a More Connected Future Using IoT

Embracing a More Connected
Future Using IoT
Investing now can help future-proof companies in a radically changing world

Proactively adopting IoT solutions helps
companies get smart faster – and adapt to
a rapidly changing environment. Yet not all
companies are succeeding with IoT adoption.
We wanted to learn why. And according to a new
study jointly run with market research firm ESI
ThoughtLab, companies with more robust and
mature IoT programs are moving more quickly
from concepts and pilots to solutions at scale. IoT
maturity is a strong predictor of success and ROI.
This suggests organizations take a hard look
at their digital maturity and their path to IoT
adoption, benchmark to industry peers and set a
roadmap to success. Is your organization on the
right track?
Prologue
2 / Embracing a More Connected Future Using IoT

2 Prologue
4 New today. A newer tomorrow: A note from Randal Kenworthy
5 Accelerating IoT adoption: Five vectors
6 The Anywhere Enterprise: Promoting flexibility and remote operations
7 The Future of Production: Automating industrial processes
8 The Road to Success: Improving CX and resiliency though digital
9 The Operational Prescription: Increasing efficiency in healthcare
10 The Smart Space: Building better, safer infrastructure
11 Understanding Digital Maturity: A note on methodology
Contents

Two decades after the phrase The Internet of Things
entered our lexicon1
, the ability for machines to talk
to each other and perform complex tasks without
human involvement is has become reality.
In practical terms, however, it has taken longer
for IoT to take hold in many businesses than
anticipated. Companies had to gauge the scale of
investments necessary to adopt IoT, were concerned
about security and data privacy, and needed to
ensure their organization could evolve to new, digital
ways of doing business without disruption.
Today, IoT allows organizations to future-proof
operations during challenging times, implementing
new capabilities and building resiliency at lower
cost. The C-suite conversation is no longer about
whether to transform the business and leverage IoT.
It is about how to best do it.
When implemented as part of a coherent,
comprehensive organizational strategy, IoT systems
need not be prohibitively expensive. Companies we
work with are using IoT to improve operations and
productivity even as the economic outlook remains
uncertain. They are using these new systems for
remote monitoring and to improve product quality
and service delivery.
A recent study by ESI ThoughtLab assessed the
digital maturity of organizations across various
industries and geographies. We learned that
companies face fewer hurdles in adopting IoT than
other technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI)
and software engineering, and that IoT deployments
are easier as businesses become more digitally
advanced.
IoT enables businesses to build the requisite
resiliency to adapt to an ever-changing world. IoT
can help organizations use information to automate
decision-making, retool and digitize processes,
enable remote work, and ensure that the production
of goods and delivery of services is as seamless
and safe as possible. This study affords companies
the opportunity to critically evaluate their own IoT
maturity and develop a more rigorous roadmap to
achieving IoT.
Randal Kenworthy
VP, IoT Strategy and Advisory
Cognizant IoT and Engineering Services
New today.A newer tomorrow.That’s IoT.
Today, organizations are adopting the Internet of Things (IoT) in various ways, benefiting
from new applications and gaining new capabilities.
BACK TO CONTENTS
1
Foote, Keith D., “A Brief History of the Internet of Things,” Dataversity 16 Aug 2016. Accessed 17 Jun 2020.

Accelerating IoT adoption is enabled by a
convergence of technologies that make devices
accessible and smart: lower-cost sensors, increased
processing power, cloud connectivity, and AI
algorithms. But while progress toward IoT adoption
is expanding, advances are uneven from industry
to industry.
Our study, conducted by ESI ThoughtLab, is
based on a survey of 2,491 executives and in-
depth interviews with a representative sample
of participants. The study showed that principal
reasons for inconsistent adoption of IoT across
industries include:
❙ The lack of an organizational strategic roadmap.
❙ Program management skills for IoT.
❙ Necessary internal acumen to build new
operations around IoT.
To improve their success, organizations must
benchmark to peers, determine where they are
on the road to digital adoption, adopt a clear and
coherent strategy, and make the investments
necessary to survive and thrive in the challenging
new business environment brought on by
the pandemic.
In the pages that follow, we highlight some of the
report’s findings and introduce five key vectors
along which accelerating IoT implementations
offer promise, describing how companies are
implementing IoT to improve operating models as
they adjust to a constantly evolving new normal:
❙ Vector #1: The Anywhere Enterprise –
Promoting flexibility and remote operations
Increasing resiliency to more effectively manage
a remote and rapidly evolving workforce while
maintaining a secure infrastructure.
❙ Vector #2: The Future of Production –
Automating industrial processes
Incorporating automation into key industrial and
production processes, from digital twins and
modeling to real-time, AI-supported data analysis
for decision-making.
❙ Vector #3: The Road to Success –
Improving customer experience
Implementing data solutions and metrics to
better track asset performance and help boost
revenue and profitability while improving
customer experience.
❙ Vector #4: The Operational Prescription –
Increasing efficiency in healthcare
Using edge, cloud and medical technologies,
healthcare organizations can provide better
care at better prices while optimizing supply and
promoting improved patient outcomes.
❙ Vector #5: The Smarter Space –
Building smarter infrastructure
Implementing solutions to conserve energy,
monitor environmental safety and implement
safeguards to protect employees, customers
and other stakeholders in commercial and
residential facilities.
IoT offers an enormous opportunity to develop
new business models; products and services; and
revenue streams. While IoT technologies are mature,
many organizations still lack the expertise, skills and
market vision to embrace them.
Accelerating IoT adoption: Five vectors
BACK TO CONTENTS
Companies investing in IoT are
seeing robust returns – with 66%
on average reporting moderate
to high gains. For leaders,this
jumps to 76%. Even more than
half (58%) of beginners report
healthy returns.
The average share of companies
seeing moderate or high
returns on IoT is well above the
percentages for some other new
technologies, like AI and digital
assistants ….This suggests that
even stronger investment in IoT
would make business sense.
– ESI ThoughtLab Survey

Organizations today are increasingly
managing a remote workforce.
They need to promote operational
resiliency, while maintaining a
secure infrastructure.
Enabling remote operations allows businesses
of all types to protect workers while improving
customer service.
We helped the equipment services division of a
global Fortune 100 consumer goods provider
to revamp antiquated, manual, paper-based
processes for managing and servicing its
massive inventory of equipment assets, as well
as expedite order-tickets for parts and on-site
equipment repair and servicing.
Chief among its challenges was ensuring that
the right equipment, including specialized parts
and tools, were available as needed at installation,
servicing and refurbishing centers, allowing
service personnel to install and maintain assets
in a single visit, reducing costs and improving
productivity.
We deployed remote asset-tracking and
management, including barcode RFID and IoT
devices. The company gained real-time visibility
into equipment operations and performance
across multiple geographies, which increased
labor productivity while reducing service costs,
inventory loss and dependencies on multiple
third parties for information management and
record-keeping.
Vector #1: The Anywhere Enterprise
Promoting flexibility and remote operations
OUTCOMES
Digitized 3 million paper-based
transactions to better track assets
and parts.
Automated inventory and
materials tracking to eliminate
manual tasks.
Eliminated costly and slow
inventory updates by moving to a
digital just-in-time approach.
Reduced lead time for supplying
equipment to customers from 4 to
5 weeks to just minutes.
BACK TO CONTENTS Consumer Goods
Companies face fewer hurdles with IoT adoption than other dimensions of digital transformation.
… IoT deployment becomes easier as firms become more digitally advanced. Given the lower
barriers to implementation and high potential returns, no wonder companies are planning to
focus more heavily on IoT development over the next three years.
– ESI ThoughtLab IoT Survey

IoT allows manufacturing
organizations to automate critical
processes and enable flexibility in
managing production flows, while
enabling managers to optimize
operations.
IoT can not only streamline processes but
also integrate operational technologies with
enterprise IT. Using AI, digital twins and modeling,
organizations can perform real-time data analysis
for decision-making and share critical feedback
with design and marketing teams.
One of our clients sought to improve operations
at more than 100 global facilities. Few of its
assets were instrumented with sensors that could
support data analytics, and the company lacked
visibility into fundamental production metrics.
It also faced limitations when communicating
and coordinating between facilities. As part
of its successful transition to Industry 4.0, the
company implemented digital twins, machinery
sensors, Bluetooth shop-floor connectivity, and
dashboards that allow managers to monitor
production machinery worldwide via a secure
private cloud.
The result is a single, virtual production hub
facility, in which state-of-the-art industrial process
management software validates real-world
solutions before pushing them to its global
operations.This promotes product quality,
improves productivity and creates new
efficiencies. This IoT nerve center allows the
company to explore, showcase and test
processes; pilot and implement pragmatic, real-
world solutions that drive return on investment;
and troubleshoot in real time.
Vector #2: The Future of Production
Automating industrial processes
OUTCOMES
100+ facilities and thousands of
machines and production lines
connected via Industrial IoT platform
Dashboards monitor asset
performance, yielding insights for
decision-making.
$100+ million in cost savings
and profitability gains over a five-
year period.
BACK TO CONTENTS Manufacturing
“Moving from technology to product and then from product to marketing is a very
long process. Usually a single kind of technology will not give solutions or make
a product. It requires the integration of multiple emerging technologies.That
integration is challenging and time consuming.”
–Jian Wei Zhang, President, Tellhow Intelligent Engineering
(cited in the ESI ThoughtLab IoT Survey)

Traditional manufacturers should
adopt IoT rapidly. The good news
is that focused projects yield
promising results.
Industrial manufacturers have more slowly
adopted IoT than companies in other sectors. For
such organizations, however, investing in cloud
infrastructure, edge computing and data analysis
can yield significant returns quickly.
A Fortune 1000 manufacturer of heavy
equipment for commercial use was experiencing
stagnating revenue growth – which in part it
attributed to the increasingly high quality and
durability of its products – leading to longer
product replacement cycle times. The company
sought to evolve to a model where it offered
information services alongside its products, while
reducing its reliance on external third parties for
data for analysis.
We implemented a telematics-based connected
vehicle platform to proactively monitor vehicle
health for fleet equipment owners, to anticipate
service needs and improve equipment run-
times. We helped the company develop its own
device for data gathering, allowing the business
to monetize vehicle performance and safety data
to help buyers improve compliance with national
maintenance standards, while using data for
product development.
Our client became a market leader in providing
valuable diagnostic data to fleet vehicle buyers, to
help them control costs.
Vector #3: The Road to Success
Tracking performance and optimizing customer experience
OUTCOMES
Reduced vehicle downtime by
30%, saving $40 million monthly.
Improved service turnaround
times by more than 70%.
Saved about $30 million in annual
warranty costs.
BACK TO CONTENTS Manufacturing
Firms moving fastest in overall digital
transformation are …furthest ahead in
the use of IoT – 53% are maturing or
advanced.

Healthcare and life sciences
companies can gain significant
operational improvements by
implementing IoT. Using edge,
cloud and analytics, healthcare
organizations can provide better
patient care while optimizing
efficiency and outcomes.
Managing supply and materials inventory in the
healthcare and life sciences sectors is particularly
complex. Having the right supplies on hand for
every procedure at every facility is essential. It’s a
challenge that can be met using IoT.
We worked with a global Fortune 500 medical
products provider to revamp its applications
ecosystem to provide a comprehensive,
connected view of materials management for
critical care and surgical supplies, linking hospital
systems and inventory data to its ordering and
supply chain management systems.
Our solution relied on AWS and edge processing
to monitor supply levels at participating hospitals
and networks, delivering information that enables
them to optimize materials management and
provide for faster resupply and better customer
service.
Enabling data insights that allow adjustments
to inventory flows in real time, we improved
inventory picking accuracy. This helps ensure
medical procedures are not delayed due to a lack
of specialized supplies. It also allows inventory
fulfillment on-premises through automated
dispensing, and provides hospitals with
customizable subscription models for bundled
products, services and support based on each
institution’s or network’s needs.
Vector #4: The Operational Prescription
Increasing efficiency in healthcare
OUTCOMES
Reduced rush orders, manual orders
and restocking by 25%.
Enabled scheduled staging of
required supplies prior to procedures.
Optimized on-premise inventory
management.
BACK TO CONTENTS Healthcare
Almost three-quarters [of life sciences companies surveyed] are making significant
investments in IoT and … seeing higher returns than other sectors. Innovations are
sweeping across the industry,from smart wrist bands and wheelchairs to microchips
placed in human organs and pills.

IoT solutions are helping commercial
and residential facilities conserve
energy, monitor environmental
safety, and implement safeguards to
protect employees, customers and
other stakeholders.
Monitoring real estate facilities has long been
an important component of planning spaces
in building management systems (BMS). Post
COVID-19, such systems are mission-critical for
ensuring a safe working environment.
We developed an IoT strategy for a new digital
infrastructure and environmental systems
management function for a leading global
real estate investment trust (REIT). We then
implemented an end-to-end IoT ecosystem that
encompassed the REIT’s disparate BMS, using
sensors and a cloud solution, for one of its larger
residential holdings. Working with deployment
partners and civil engineering consultants, we
supervised instrumentation of more than 10,000
individual residences and common areas to
further guide the integration of systems and
HVAC and water pump equipment data.
We created a digital twin of physical systems for
environmental and health safety management
replicable across other holdings in the client’s
global real estate portfolio. We embedded
dashboards that reduced the complexity of
managing multiple properties and reporting
on various systems and equipment. Our
solution reduced maintenance and labor costs,
allowing our client to reinvest its cost savings in
improving amenities that enhance the residential
community, while improving resident safety.
Vector #5: Smart Space, Safer Space
Building better, safer infrastructure
OUTCOMES
Projected operational costs will
decrease more than 8%.
Attained direct savings from a
$4.2 million green-city tax incentive to
fuel new program aspects.
Reduced need for mechanical fixes,
lowering labor costs by more than 8%.
BACK TO CONTENTS Infrastructure
“A key point for any firm looking to digitally transform is to establish both short- and long-
term goals and look for a system that can meet both sets of needs.… By choosing a system
that is scalable and flexible, companies can get the most out of their digital investment
over the long haul.”
–Jay Sachetti, Director, IoT Alliance – Eaton Lighting
(cited in the ESI ThoughtLab IoT Survey)

We partnered with ESI ThoughtLab to survey 2,491
executives, in an effort to identify ways to help
organizations develop a roadmap for successful IoT
deployment. The results were validated by evidence-
based performance metrics.
The study examined how firms across 13 industries
and four regions are harnessing new technologies
to transform their strategies, processes and
performance results. ESI ThoughtLab also
interviewed senior executives from more than 25
companies across industries and countries.
Digital maturity scores were derived from survey
questions related to three dimensions:
❙ What stage of development is your company at, in
the following areas of digital transformation now?
❙ What percentage of revenue comes through
traditional channels and was influenced by digital?
❙ Which of the following benefits is your company
receiving from digital transformation today?
Calculated scores for each dimension were then
combined into an aggregate digital maturity score.
Each respondent was then assigned into one of four
maturity stages based on the distribution of scores:
Leaders in digital transformation:
80th percentile and above
Advancing digital transformation:
55th percentile to 80th percentile
Implementing digital transformation:
30th percentile to 55th percentile
Beginning digital transformation:
30th percentile and below
Understanding digital maturity: A note on our methodology
BACK TO CONTENTS
Adoption of IoT is expanding
across industries,from
connected cars and
manufacturing equipment,to
remote medicine and wearables,
and to digital banking; and
telematics-enabled insurance.
But progress is uneven. Over
half of the digital leaders
are advanced in their IoT
applications, compared with just
11% of beginners. So why is there
such a gap?
– ESI ThoughtLab Survey

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visit www.cognizant.com/IoT.
About Cognizant Digital Business
We help clients build digital businesses and innovate products that create new value – by using sensing, insights, software and experience
to deliver on what customers demand in the digital age. Through IoT, we connect the digital and physical worlds to make smart, efficient and
safe products, operations and enterprises. Leveraging data, analytics and AI, we drive intelligent decisions and anticipate where markets and
customers are going next. Then we use those insights, combining design and software, to deliver the experiences that consumers expect of
their brands. Learn more about how we’re engineering the modern enterprise at cognizant.com/digitalbusiness.
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admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.cognizant.com or follow us @Cognizant.

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