The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to reshape entire industries. The business value can be profound—ranging from digitizing an organization’s internal operations and customer experience to unlocking disruptive new digital products and business models.

There are two fundamental opportunities for IoT to create value within the enterprise:

  1. Connected Products: Companies can engineer new IoT-enabled features and services into new connected products to differentiate and improve experiences.
  2. Connected Business Processes: They can use IoT to improve their operations with better, smarter information.

There are many companies who are already taking advantage of the data explosion driven by IoT, using machine learning and predictive analytics to optimize, innovate and transform their business by building IoT applications, also known as Smart Apps.

Here are some examples of IoT Applications in different industries:

Airline

An equipment tracking app provides an airline’s engineers with a live view of the locations of each piece of maintenance equipment. By increasing the efficiency of engineers, this IoT application is not only generating significant cost savings and process improvements, but also impacting the customer experience in the end through more reliable, on-time flights.

Pharmaceutical

A medication temperature monitoring app uses sensors as a way to ensure the best possible delivery of medical supplies. The temperature of medications is key to meeting quality standards and regulations, and the IoT application monitors every shipment in order to ensure the proper temperature is maintained and to remind patients to take their medication on time.

Manufacturing

A lighting manufacturer for the horticultural industry built a Smart App that leverages IoT sensors and predictive analytics to perform predictive maintenance and optimize lighting, power consumption and plant photosynthesis. The IoT application transformed their business from a lighting systems manufacturer to a greenhouse optimization as-a-service.

Insurance

An insurance company offers policyholders discounts for wearing Internet-connected Fitbit wristbands. The fitness tracking service is part of the insurer’s Vitality program aimed at integrating wellness benefits with life insurance. Through this IoT application, this insurer is creating smart life insurance products and rewarding customers for their positive actions.

Business Services

A facility services company uses their multi-device IoT application to enable support personnel to receive alerts about service issues and take immediate action. By aggregating data from thousands of sensors in places like coffee machines, soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers and mouse traps rather than manual checks, the application has significantly cut costs and improved service levels.

Media & Entertainment

An entertainment design and production firm uses sensors in turnstiles of venues to understand the foot traffic of people at events. Their IoT application visualizes the attendee traffic patterns in real time to help sponsors understand the best places to advertise, and to ensure the attendee count stays within the fire code compliance of the venue.