IIoT as a Competitive Advantage

IIoT as a Competitive Advantage

Changing your focus from the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) “technology” to the use, benefit, and thereby resulting competitive advantage can help your business grow more quickly while providing a stronger message and positioning. A comprehensive communications strategy built around this will allow your customers or end users to “see” the true value and benefit of your IIoT solution.

As we know, IIoT consists of interconnected sensors, instruments, and other devices networked together within a computers’ industrial applications such as supply chain monitoring and management system insight. These applications can be used in many industries including manufacturing, energy, transportation, mining, automotive and oil and gas.

Connectivity benefits include increased automation, operations efficiency, safety monitoring, and cost reductions which lead to economic advantages resulting from the data collected, information exchanged, and data analyzed as a result of this connectivity. But what does this really mean? How does your business take these functions and usage of IIoT and convert it to an actionable communications strategy? What are the recognized benefits to your clients or their end users? How are your clients sharing these advantages with their end users

Turning IIoT into an Actionable Communications Strategy

I recommend following a simple scalable process to define and position your communications strategy to drive competitive advantage. To begin, conduct a market assessment. Define how your business utilizes IIoT, your market segment(s) requirements, challenges, and the benefits of the features or functionality. Expand the assessment to include a review of how competitors position their IIoT solutions. Use the intelligence to conduct a gap assessment comparing your products or services to your competitors. Utilize the results to determine the advantages you offer prospects and customers.

The next step is to use this information to build your communications strategy. Define your message and include the benefits of your firms’ features and functionality. The messaging can then be used to create and promote insightful content highlighting these values ultimately driving prospects to your business. Take that same content and tweak the angle of the messaging so it is appropriate and applicable to additional audiences including prospects, customers, and the broader market through trade publications, brochures, blogs, social media, public speaking, and webinars.

To modify this same information for a direct sales campaign, create a list of prospects in your target market who can benefit from the same advantages. Integrate the message into your sales process, educate your teams, and communicate it to your prospect businesses and their executives.

Campaign Monitoring & Reporting 

And, finally, ensure you monitor and report on the effectiveness of your messaging and campaigns. You may gain valuable feedback from the recipients of the campaign and be able to improve, expand, or simply tweak your messaging to make it even more effective. Simple adjustments to your messaging can drive new opportunities.

Changing your focus from the IIoT “technology” to competitive advantage can be advantageous to the future strength of your business. This kind of comprehensive approach will allow your customers or the end users to accurately “see” the values and benefits your business offers.

 

About the Author

This article was written by Joel Pekay, the founding partner of Scuderia Partners LLC and responsible for marketing and business development. He is a customer-focused leader with a knack for building new revenue streams and forging long-lasting loyal relationships with clients, vendors, and business partners. Scuderia Partners provides businesses with an outsourced team of experts skilled in developing and growing revenue through sales and marketing.