IoT Spotlight Report 2020
2020 has been a challenging year and has made business take a step back and re-evaluate.When we conducted the research for our IoT Spotlight in May 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to understand how businesses were adapting during such an uncertain time.What we found was that 84% of the companies felt the Internet of Things (IoT) had ensured business continuity for them during the pandemic. It helped them to remain connected to their customers, suppliers and employees.In fact, we see more and more businesses turning to IoT to help them grow stronger and adapt in the face of unforeseen events.The ability to harness technology is a fundamental attribute of being a ‘future ready’ business. ‘Future ready’ is a term we coined in our recent report to denote those businesses who are well prepared to embrace what’s ahead of them. ‘Future ready’ businesses have a positive attitude to change and are open to new technology. They actively plan for their technological futures and set detailed strategies. They keep up to date with emerging trends and, crucially, are able to adapt to new trends or challenges, making them quicker to market than their competitors.The similarities with the findings in our IoT Spotlight are clear – ‘future ready’ equals IoT ready in many respects.This year Vodafone Business achieved the key milestone of 100 million IoT connections worldwide. In our IoT Spotlight research we found that among those who have adopted IoT, their use of the technology is becoming much more sophisticated. Businesses have moved on from simply trying to understand IoT to harnessing it to achieve their business goals. Leaders have realised that access to data and automated processes provide a pathway to digitalisation. With this shift comes higher efficiency, flexibility and differentiation.But while IoT is more trusted and used than ever before, our research shows that there are still many organisations yet to really make the most of it. This may be due to a growing belief that IoT has to be part of a wider programme of change to be truly transformational.To reap the benefits, leaders need to review and revitalise their business processes and ways of working. For those ready to embrace the opportunity and become a ‘future ready’ business, the reward will be worth the effort.For our 2020 IoT Spotlight, we surveyed 1,639 businesses globally. In this report, we delve into how business leaders are using IoT, how it’s helping them be ‘future ready’ and what’s next for IoT.Erik Brenneis,Internet of Things Director, Vodafone Business2 | Foreword
Chapter 2 What’s the impact of COVID-19? 12Chapter 3 Creating the future ready business19Chapter 4 What’s next for IoT? 26Chapter 5 A comparison of IoT adopters31About the IoT Spotlight 33Chapter 1 Why IoT adoption is growing64E...
