Workflow optimization is one of the most important tasks for businesses to fulfill in order to achieve more efficiency. Sometimes organizations use workflow software to improve task accomplishment and monitoring.
However, it’s not always the best choice. In recent years, IoT data platforms have helped in achieving this. This article has useful tips that help companies optimize their workflow through smart automation.
IoT platforms that process data from numerous sensors can help to reduce time and financial resources on activities that previously required double attention and effort. Does it sound interesting?
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Let’s give this topic a go with some basic concepts. To begin with, we should define an IoT platform.
What’s an IoT platform?
An IoT platform is a software solution that allows you to conduct an analysis of a facility, location, or person’s condition remotely. Most often, such solutions include:
- remote management of data collection
- secure data transmission
- IoT update management
- data processing and analysis
If we are to describe the way an IoT platform works, it will look like this:
- IoT sensors gather real-time data (which is the primary IoT device workflow) and send it to the gateway
- The gateway clears and processes data and sends it to the IoT analytics platform
- The IoT platform analyzes and visualizes the data acquired
- Operators, workers, or providers use this data to monitor the condition of a location, facility, or person and make data-driven decisions
- If machine learning is applied, the platform automatically conducts specific tasks without human intervention
There are also a few things we’d like to mention:
- depending on the platform’s functionality, it can also provide operators with suggestions on improving their quality of work (if artificial intelligence is applied)
- operators can manage sensors at a distance: This may be required during scheduled maintenance, sensor software updates, or for other reasons
You might have recognized a few advantages of such platforms so far. However, let’s consider some of them in more detail.
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What advantages can an IoT platform bring to your facility?
There are a number of advantages you can use to improve your business operation:
- Data processing and analysis. The first benefit you will get after the implementation of an IoT platform is automatic data processing and analysis. You will spend less time, or even none, manually analyzing reports as a result. An IoT platform will process the collected data and analyze clean data sets to provide you with useful insights into how your business operates. Naturally, a lot depends on the capabilities of the platform you choose to buy or create from the ground up. If it doesn’t have the necessary functionality for data processing, you will have to work with unreliable information. However, with appropriate investments, you will be able to build your internal processes based on trustworthy figures.
- Informed decision-making. Having precise insights into how your business operates, with all its drawbacks and merits, will allow you to change or refine your business strategy. An IoT platform can even provide you with suggestions regarding necessary improvements. Having historical data analyzed and compared with real-time data, the system is able to identify weak spots and offer a means of dealing with them.
- Workflow automation. It’s convenient when some basic, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks are conducted automatically. And, thankfully, an IoT platform is capable of this. With the internet of things, automation of workflow helps workers spend more time on tasks that require their obligatory participation and forget about standard procedures that have a similar scenario of actions every time.
- Better productivity. With digital workflow automation, workers will be able to complete more tasks and even work more efficiently and ahead of schedule. In the long run, this will boost your company’s productivity. Besides, having analyzed data in their hands, workers will be able to focus on more urgent tasks, such as urgent maintenance of equipment, asset management, etc.
Now you know what advantages you can enjoy after implementing an IoT platform. We bet you would like to jump from theory to live examples. Let us tell you about the benefits that various industries get thanks to IoT technology and IoT platform implementation.
How industries benefit from IoT platforms
IoT technology and IoT platforms have been adopted in many industries, and their adoption is becoming more widespread. In today’s article, we’re going to discuss a few industries that have been actively exploiting such technologies:
- Remote patient monitoring isn’t a new thing for you, we suppose. Wearables, fitness trackers, and healthcare IoT devices have made patient monitoring significantly easier. It was especially useful when COVID-19 started. Enumerated devices have been helping practitioners to gather data on patients’ health conditions and provide them with treatment even without on-site visits. This practice has gone even further: now patients can send data from all the devices available to provide practitioners with a broader context of their health.
- IoT sensors help to transmit data about the condition of the field, equipment, and animals to the IoT platform used by a farmer. They can get extensive information about the conditions in which animals live and crops grow. Given this data, they can adjust smart lighting, watering, and heating (heating ribbons) systems in order to create the best conditions for crops. The same goes for animals and equipment: farmers can remotely monitor their conditions and take appropriate measures if they see any deviations or issues. Besides, IoT platforms help to keep tabs on assets, inventory, and waste.
- IoT technology in logistics has been demonstrating unbearable usefulness and necessity. A lot of time-consuming and error-prone tasks have changed their category to automatic and quick. With IoT sensors and a data management system implemented, it became possible to:
- track assets remotely and without human intervention
- enable advanced fleet management, route management, and so much more.
- IoT platforms help banks to analyze their performance. For instance, they can analyze the performance of specific ATMs or how often smart devices are used to conduct contactless payments. Another way to use IoT platforms in banking is to analyze data about customer visits to the bank, questions and issues they bring up, and provide better customer service.
- In manufacturing, an IoT platform helps plant workers keep track of everything that’s going on around them: conditions at the plant, equipment conditions, and so on. IoT sensors gather information about everything inside the plant and help to manage the appropriate conditions for the facility to correctly operate.
As you can see, IoT technology and IoT platforms aren’t new to industries. Its scope of applications is getting wider day by day, helping to maintain an efficient and high-quality work process.
There are numerous IoT platforms that you can use in accordance with your fundamental demands and requirements. If there are no platforms that can completely meet your business needs, you can opt for custom IoT platform development to make sure it will cover all of your business requirements.