For several years the IoT M2M Council (IMC) has collected data on a quarterly basis tracking IoT buying patterns by surveying its 25,000 rank-and-file IMC Adopter Members – all self-identified IoT buyers, writes Keith Kreisher, the organisation’s executive director. To get started, there was much discussion among industry experts – mostly, the companies making up the IMC Board of Governors – about what kind of industry roles would be helpful to track.
We settled on three key categories of the IoT industry to focus on:
1) Enterprise users – defined as business units that utilise connected devices for their day-to-day operations, such as tracking assets for supply-chain management.
2) Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) – defined as business units that embed connected devices within products that they in turn sell, such as car makers or medical device manufacturers.
3) Apps developers/systems integrators/ independent software vendors (ISVs) – defined as businesses that develop new, specific applications, possibly to be sold to or used among the two groups above.
In the last two years, we’ve quantified that these groups do, in fact, show significantly different characteristics that validate different personas among IoT buyers.
Enterprise users
Almost one quarter of those identifying themselves as enterprise users are directly involved in logistics. The enterprise user is often a supply-chain manager within an enterprise who defines their role broadly as operations. It is interesting that a plurality of IMC rank-and-file members define themselves in this way, and that’s true across 25 of the 27 vertical markets that we track. Almost three quarters of their IoT deployments are low-volume – under 1,000 devices. This makes this user the lowest-volume end user of our three identified personas.
Because they are in operations, we surmise that they have a greater need to integration of IoT technology with backbone systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). They are more likely to begin their IoT procurement process by speaking with systems integrators rather than other IoT buyers. Enterprise users also cite a lack of business models as their biggest IoT hurdle more often than other buyers, while they are less likely to cite interoperability as a problem.
Product makers and OEMs
The product maker is as likely to define their corporate role as product design/development as operations. Almost a third of their IoT deployments involve more than 10,000 devices, making them the highest volume buying persona out there – they’re 50% more likely to be sourcing large-scale deployments than others.
A plurality of all IoT buyers begin their journey by talking to systems integrators, but product makers are more likely to make their first stop a device maker. They cite a lack of interoperability as one of their biggest hurdles in the IoT procurement process – more so than others – and this is a trend that is increasing over time. These demographics make sense because the product maker is incorporating IoT technology into products that they provide to others.
Apps developer
The developers’ function goes by different names – apps developer, independent software vendor, application-specific systems integrator – and their role is somewhat more difficult to define. On the scale-volume, this persona falls between the enterprise user and the product maker – just over half of their deployments are under 1,000 devices.
Apps developers have lately been telling us that they are planning longer lead-times for their deployments but it’s hard to know whether this is simply a function of current, unstable economic conditions. Apps developers are more likely to begin their buyer’s journey by talking to an IoT software platform provider than our other personas. Like product makers, they are increasingly citing interoperability as a concern, as well.
The IMC has substantial data to back up these personas, and we make that data available to our Sustaining Member companies on a bi-annual basis. This includes complete breakdowns of buying timelines, size of deployment, connectivity types, vendor types, and time to implementation for the three buyer personas described above.
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