Scaled up IoT drives business transformation

Paul Albada Jelgersma

Global Head Atos IoT Solutions

Business Division Connected Living & Mobility at Worldline

Global Head of Codex, Atos Distinguished Expert

Posted on: 19 April 2018

One of the highlights of our recent Global Analyst Conference in Boston was the genuine sense of enthusiasm following the keynote session where we presented the Atos vision of the Internet of Things (IoT).

There was a real feeling that the IoT has now moved beyond experimentation and towards real-world implementation at business scale. The analyst community singled out the sheer number of managed IoT case studies we were able to talk about.

In their review of the event, analysts at the Everest Group said that the IoT is now “breaking away as a mature digital market.”

These analysts concluded: “IoT is starting to gain significant traction in the modern enterprise. Service providers are moving beyond free pilots as the conversation has turned from experimentation to business value. Atos laid out encouraging progress with actual client successes and measurable outcomes across a range of industries.”

At Atos, we have taken our IoT ambitions to the next level because of our end-to-end capabilities in digital business, supported by our expertise in managed services and cybersecurity and by our proven ability to ensure compliance with current regulations such as GDPR. These are all key elements when it comes to making the IoT work at business scale.

Transformation at scale

We believe that the IoT is the starting point of many digital journeys. The IoT, which connects the real world with the digital world, is often an essential component of digital transformation.

In Boston, we presented examples of customers who are already deploying the IoT at scale to reinvent fundamental parts of their business.

For several years, we have worked with customers on connected vehicle platforms that have been personalizing the driver experience and cutting the costs of running fleets. Now, we are seeing more customers harnessing IoT technologies to go even further, and reinvent their business models.

For example, we discussed how a large insurance company is working with Worldline, an Atos subsidiary, to introduce Pay-How-You-Drive insurance for corporate fleet owners. The service combines a fleet management solution, which the fleet owners can use to optimize their fleet operations, with an innovative Pay-How-You-Drive insurance scheme.

Using data generated by the car, combined with data on weather conditions and other contextual information, the insurance company calculates each driver’s score and determines the optimum premium to be paid.

From a pilot project of 350 vehicles, we envisage extending this service to cover 30,000 cars and vans all across Europe, reducing fuel consumption, decreasing the cost of claims and fraud management, and improving driver behavior and road safety.

Reinvention at speed

Away from connected vehicles, another of our customers is using the IoT to reinvent age-old processes in the warehousing industry.

For warehouse owners and operators, the costs of rodent infestation can be massive, as regulators will require them to effectively shut down their operations on-site until they are clear of pests.

Our customer, a major multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company in North America, is a market leader in making sure that warehouses are free of rodents. The traditional way of trapping rodents is time-consuming, expensive and labor-intensive. By installing IoT-connected sensors in the traps, and by monitoring other variables such as environmental data, temperature and humidity, we were able to transform this process in just four months.

The results of the project speak for themselves. The field service teams now only have to check 10 traps per warehouse instead of 300. The cost of service has fallen by 80%. A total of 95% of users says they love the service.

Furthermore, the customer is now not just selling pesticide: it is selling a complete pest-free warehouse service as an outcome. The potential for the B2C market is clear.

Beyond the use case

The IoT has moved beyond the period of experimentation and proof-of-concept and is now enabling real business transformation.

In another example, we have recently deployed a pilot IoT platform which is connecting thousands of coolers one of the world’s largest bottlers with operations in 28 countries serving approximately 595 million consumers; pilot results indicate an increase in sales, a reduction in costs and these new connected assets on the shop floor provide an exciting new channel for digital customer engagement.

To deliver the IoT at scale, without risk of interruption, requires a broad range of assets and capabilities that cover the full value chain. Our approach is to provide customers with a managed enterprise IoT offering, with KPIs driven not only by IT but by business-focused outcomes, such as the quality and usability of data and the speed of data availability.

As the IoT evolves towards a new scale, the possibilities seem almost endless. Atos, through its Atos Codex offering, is already managing more than 70 million IoT transactions every day and is in the process of securing more than 20 million IoT-connected objects.

The industrialization of the IoT is becoming a reality. As we discussed in Boston, the IoT is already generating value, creating new business models and delivering real transformation to our customers. There is an exciting future out there, full of possibilities for enterprises to harness the power of IoT to make advances in achieving their business ambitions.