The Coming Wave of Connectedness

In our previous post, The Internet of Everything, we talked about the Internet of Everything, how it came about, and how it may change our lives in general. In this post, we’ll focus on how this new wave will affect business.

Marketing pundits agree that the coming Internet of Everything will change the way we do business. However, they also agree that no one can predict the full scope of the changes in practical terms.

So what’s a business to do? The best path is to:

Start preparing now based on the ramifications that are well understood.

Stay informed as things continue to unfold.

What Will Happen

There will be an incredible number of smart (aka “connected”) devices in our lives. From things we wear to the appliances in our homes. Rich Guest, U.S. president of Tribal Worldwide, says the new connected life will be an amalgam of:

The Quantified Self
The Connected Home
Wearable Devices

The quantified self that Rich refers to is a recent surge in popularity of products that allow us to track the state of our bodies. This can include tracking insulin or cortisol levels, sleep, diet, exercise and more.)

How It Will Happen: 

Smart phones will lead the way

Smart phones have been dubbed the “gateway drug” for Internet of Everything.. They are perfectly positioned to become the central device connecting us to the physical world around us – and the amazing amount of data streaming in from near and far.

Major Opportunity for Businesses:

The Market Size is Huge

You begin to get an inkling of the impact of the Internet of Everything when you look at the astounding numbers predicted for the total market size. Here are a few statistics to whet your appetite:

Machina Research says “Connected Life Market Revenue” (the sum of all revenue accruing from the sale of connected devices and all related services) will reach $971 billion in 2020.
Cisco predicts that by 2022, the Internet of Everything will create $14.4 trillion in value and boost overall corporate profits by 21%.
McKinsy Global Institute’s report on disruptive technology states, “We estimate the potential economic impact of the Internet of Things to be $2.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion per year by 2025 …” 

How to Ride the Wave

There are multiple ways that businesses can hitch a ride on the wave of the Internet of Everything. They can add connectivity to products, create new connected products, or offer a support service or peripheral product. Here are some examples:

New Connectivity for Existing Products

Belkin’s Crock-Pot Smart Slow Cooker enabled by WeMo.
Tegwear Technology: a chip that can recharge wearable electronic devices using only body heat.

Completely New Smart Products

The Pulse device tracks activity and heart-rate.
The Spotter lets you monitor motion, sound, light, temperature, and humidity in remote locations from your smart phone.

Support Services and Peripherals

The Quark: The smallest chip yet made by Intel. It connects mobile devices, including wearables and smartphones, to other electronic devices.

The Accelerator: A business incubator-type program by R/GA to help startups developing “connected” hardware products and software services

Data Services: There will be an entire field dedicated to data: mining it, analyzing it, developing insights from it. Jordan Holberg, Director of Technology at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York says,

“The biggest change will be in the way we intake and analyze the mountains of data generated by the connected devices and Internet of Things. More number crunching, more people to interpret the data, and better interfaces to report and take action.”

Businesses Can Be More Agile

Even if your business doesn’t get directly involved with the Internet of Everything, it will still benefit by increased efficiency brought on by the IoE. A recent Yahoo News report says, “Companies can track every aspect of their business, from managing inventory and fulfilling orders as quickly as possible to locating and deploying field service staff. Tools and factories and vehicles will all be connected and reporting their locations.”

A Change in Marketing:

With internet-connected chips embedded in millions of products, a gigantic ocean of data will be created. This data ocean will be an incredibly rich source of information for marketers, and has the potential to provide businesses with highly targeted up-to-the-minute prospects.

Up-to-the-Minute Marketing

As protocols are developed allowing connected devices to communicate with each other, amazingly specific marketing offers can be generated. CMS Wire’s March 2014 article describes this phenomenon:

“As more devices begin to work together, scenarios where advertising becomes more tailored to each person and instance will become more robust. Your fridge might see that you are almost out of milk, but information from your scale shows that you have been steadily shedding pounds over the past few weeks, which correlates with the exercise data captured from your smart watch. Seeing an opportunity based on this data, your refrigerator may send a notification to your phone offering you a discount for a specific brand of skim milk. It’s this type of advertising — specific to a person, instance and time — that advertisers and marketers will be able to tap with data from the Internet of Things.”

New SEO

If you thought SEO was complicated before – having to cover both mobile and desktop channels – get ready, because there will soon be another channel: residential.

Any smart device within the home that includes an internet search function becomes part of the residential SEO realm. In the near future, we may be searching for recipes from their refrigerator, checking the weather forecast from our smart closet, and finding current bargains for laundry detergent from our washing machines.

So how do you get your business listings to be ranked high in these residential search results? As in the other SEO channels, high quality content will play a crucial role. Entepreneur magazine recommends that business owners start by investing in their mobile content marketing efforts, as residential SEO will have a lot in common with mobile SEO.

A Change in Customer Service

In a survey conducted by Cisco, customer service (i.e. improved customer experience) was the second-ranked benefit predicted for the Internet of Everything.

Predictions are that the Internet of Everything will bring customer service to new heights by:

Allowing customers to talk directly with remote experts by video.

Creating smart devices so intelligent that they solve their own problems, or, in the cases where some action is required, alert the owner ahead of time.

Salesforce is already making a bid to be the “go to” company for managing the diverse interactions of this new customer service.

What can companies do to join the customer service revolution? In a well-thought out article, Harvard Business Review offers some suggestions. In summary, they recommend that businesses:

Build more robust knowledge bases, and make them easy to access.
Invest in a strong data analytics platform.
Hire and train smarter customer support agents.