| |February 20179CIOReviewAs IoT evolves and organisations develop a specific IoT strategy, optimisation and prediction will get more focusmonitoringhave become the entry-level applications for IoT. But as IoT evolves and organisations develop a spe-cific IoT strategy, optimisation and prediction will get more focus.Sensors, geo-location, cloud services, nanotechnol-ogy, 3D printing, big data, robotics, user interface (UI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and so on, when combined with IoT, can bring about radical change in supply chain management (SCM) processes. All areas, whether inbound or outbound, are being optimised, re-fined or redefined. The time to execute is beingreduced and outcome is enhanced, resulting in greater realisation and cost reduction. Addressing the Challenges Most manufacturers and logistics providers are on the lookout for data related to location, security, temperature and speed, to provide their customers with timely infor-mation.The biggest challenge, however, is in managing, analysing, leveraging and protecting all the data collected.The `one-size-fits-all' approach to IoT does not work. In emerging markets, such as India, for example, there are barriers in terms of adoption of the tech-nology itself--and those should be addressed first.The best way to go about it would be to work towards ad-dressing one problem at a time, having a good internal team, partners and finally, doing a proof of con-cept (PoC) before starting on a bigger scale. Despite the cost barriers to implementing IoT, a significant number of manufactur-ers are looking to expand their usage of IoT as the go-to technology for gaining real-time visibility. One more factor for supply chain man-agement companies to consider would be- a security policy which plays a key role nowadays. Today, only few or-ganisations have adequate check and control mechanisms. Physi-cal, digital and cloud security measures need to be taken so that both internal and external threats are addressed. To get the full benefits of technologies such as IoT, com-panies should get the work-force ready by making them learn new concepts and un-learn the old ones. Showcas-ing small use cases in business areas will help them under-stand better. This, along with the vision and involvement of senior executives, will help achieve the desired results.Closing Thoughts Going digital is not just a one-time project, but a cultural-shift for organisations. It is the future and every company needs to have a digital plan in place, not only to grow but to survive as well. While many have started adopt-ing the digital path, only a few have evolved. CIOs will continue to drive digitisation; however, the future will witness more Chief Digital Officers (CDO) managing it along with the Chief Executive Officers (CEO).Customer experiences, business processes and models are all very important from an organisation's growth and strategy point of view, and they are getting redefined due to the digital journey.Future investments will happen in areas such as fleet management, asset management, monitoring and diagnostics, warehouse management which in-cludes stores and inventory management as well. Over the next five years, there will be multi-folded growth in IoT. McKinsey estimates the total Internet of Things market size in 2015 was up to USD 900M, growing to USD 3.7B in 2020 at-taining a 32.6percent CAGR. It has also estimated that IoT will have a potential economic im-pact of USD 2.7T to USD6.2T until 2025.The journey has just be-gun. Digital and IoT will drive growth and sustenance for the supply chain processes, with both inbound and outbound lo-gistics, smart warehouse and fleet management to experience high level of adoption. Sangram Kadam
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