More Transparency and Customer Profiles

According to the data, suppliers are asking for more transparency from their distribution partners. For example, suppliers would like monthly reporting from their distribution partners indicating the number of orders received and, more specifically, who is buying which devices, why they are buying them, when, and where.  

Suppliers also want more customer insight. They requested a heatmap so suppliers can clearly see the concentration of high-volume customers. This will aid them in their prospecting efforts. Customer success stories were another area suppliers would like assistance with developing and promoting their IoT solutions.

Most interviewed felt that contact names and the company data would be most useful for suppliers. Any information gathered on the use case would be highly valuable. Suppliers are asking their distributors to share that information on a monthly strategy call. Those queried said that the partnership between them and their distributors and manufacturers is considered “a joint effort” that will benefit both sides. Knowing the names of the companies that are buying and what they’re buying will help the suppliers support companies looking to secure more business from suppliers themselves. One supplier gave an example where they might have contacts with other companies to help the supplier launch a more coordinated effort to win over the organization. Or they might identify that a buyer is in a certain industry for which they have other products that tend to sell well.

Supportive Marketing

Offering information on marketing campaign results was among the top requests from suppliers. It would be enormously beneficial if a distributor could provide suppliers with effective marketing analytics, including clicks, impressions, and ROI perspectives. Those results would clearly indicate how suppliers craft and launch future marketing communications campaigns.  

Suppliers said they would be focused on developing robust marketing plans and promoting case studies linked to various products highlighting the partners involved and how that partnership contributed to the success. Others said they would be focused on their messaging platform and how they are considered a ‘problem solver’ in their industry and the difference between being perceived as a solution provider versus a hardware provider. Perhaps even more important is the need to emphasize the benefits to the end-user. Other areas of focus include getting onboarded into the IoT ecosystem. Some suppliers have completed the technical side and are now ready in 2022 to promote it through marketing.    

Customer Engagement

Some hired new team members back in the fall to help prospects and boost their customer base. They said they now have more resources going into the new year to increase customer engagement with the new sales managers they’ve recently hired. Most are cultivating their existing partnerships and exploring new ones. They are creating new sales kits, exploring different lead development, more PoC based kits, adding webinars, and participating in sale site give away promotions. A majority said they have plans to ramp up their provisioning services.

Vertical Markets

One supplier expects to realign into new vertical markets and is expecting exciting trends to continue. Another is looking to expand their presence in the U.S. and E.U. markets. Yet others said they’ll continue to foster sound connections with their ‘bread and butter accounts and expand into new markets. They see the ‘smart home’ market as one of the more immediate pathways to growth. Advancements in indoor/outdoor asset tracking and Wi-Fi IoT product lines to cover indoor and outdoor home solutions will also be a focus. This is good news since one of the industry’s leaders that manufacture high-performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors give devices the ability to provide real-time data and analytics for suppliers. Some other areas positioned for growth in 2022 include cold chain, IoT plug-n-play, and display tables and solutions involved with those.

Suppliers would like their distribution partners to help support their social media initiatives and participate in joint marketing and public relations efforts. They want to be very strategic with their distribution partners, working with them on new product launches, gaining support from an operational standpoint, and cultivating leads, along with meeting sales goals. Clear, ongoing, and open communication between the distribution partners and their suppliers ranked the top three requests.

Like anything that has the potential to surpass the survival stage and achieve massive success in both favorable and challenging conditions, whether those conditions be political or economic, the IoT (Internet of Things) movement, or revolution as I like to call it, requires a fundamental component to succeed. And that component goes well beyond sensors and gateways. I’m referring to an essential in all business practices, and that is collaboration.

Every technology ecosystem foundation includes the basics, hardware, software, and services, that ultimately convert data into intelligence that we all can use for practical, everyday applications. I have found in my professional experience that no single technology platform, OEM, or service provider can successfully supply all the necessary elements to create the perfect and complete ecosystem. Thus, we need something intangible – an honest, pure, and benevolent connection between each other.

Collaboration

It’s no secret that teams that work together, cohesively, towards a common goal tend to achieve better results. Collaboration reduces the barriers to productivity, and in the IoT world, speed to market coupled with accuracy and functionality are critical to the success of any new technology solution.

Some predict that the next generation IoT will rely heavily on human-centered approaches, and to some extent, we’re already there. In AI, connectivity, and security, technology companies have built their platforms based on empathy with the people using the product or service. The premise is that by understanding the end-user’s needs, wants, and desires, the product team will build a solution that will be extremely useful and easy to use for the audience in which the solution was intended.

Suppose our goal is to deploy IoT architectures with better efficiency, scalability, security, and long-term applicability. In that case, we need to keep in mind the link between technology and human connection. My recommendation is to reach out to those who supported your career early on, whether a mentor, professor, football coach, neighbor or business associate. Ask how you can help them. You’ll be surprised at the fantastic opportunities you’ll uncover for both you, your company, and your connections.

IoT Space

Since the arrival of the term “IoT” and the switch from the M2M mindset to the IoT mindset, forward-thinking companies have raced to be first to market with “industry disruptive” or “transformative” IoT solutions. However, more and more companies leveraging IoT for the last few years are coming to us with a similar story. Although they’ve had some success because they were among the early adopters, some of the cutting-edge solutions they’ve invested in are, funnily enough, outdated.

The problem is, in 2016, IoT as a whole was reaching its adolescence. As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, IoT has reached early adulthood thanks to innovation during and because of the pandemic. And that means for companies looking to scale and scale, big, hard choices have to be made about scrapping much of the work done and deployed in the last six years and standardizing on the technologies that won the race. Anyone in NorAm who deployed Sigfox or MiWi knows this fact better than anyone. There was no ecosystem to support those technologies, unlike open technologies like LoRaWAN. The rise of LoRa caused the demise of those leading ‘closed system’ technologies that were critical in the early years of IoT. The vendor lock didn’t work; the people have voted against it. Instead, significant open ecosystems like LoRaWAN are gaining momentum at breakneck speed.

For some companies, this could be a difficult pill to swallow. In IoT’s infancy, everyone did whatever it took to get their solution into the market the quickest. Foresight and thoughtfulness often gave way to speed and PR splashes. The “right” answer was usually “good enough.” Now, company leaders are rethinking and reexamining their approach to the IoT space. This became very clear when I spoke to dozens of companies at the Miami IoT Evolution Expo in June.

The consensus was that these companies are planning to consolidate, and it’s mainly around the technology. They deployed at scale. They know it’s a hard decision to re-work what they’ve built, particularly for those who’ve sunk millions of dollars into the build and now they need to start over. It’s painful, but like so many technologies in the past, IoT has matured. These intelligent leaders know it’s time to evolve.

IoT.2

Here are some of the IoT.2 questions companies should be asking: Is there a better technology today than the one we chose? Better meaning faster, smaller, more affordable, or allowing more data? Did we architect this in an optimal way or for scale? Can we consolidate our vendor engagement, and are we future-proof? Is the ecosystem that supports my technology growing or shrinking? How have sales and deployment models been going?

It might be going great. Some people placed smart bets, and it was future-proof. Not everyone needs to regroup and take a hit. Some IoT disruptive technologies have been an enormous success. Cold chain and temperature monitoring in the foodservice industry is one shining example. Allowing manufacturers, distributors, and restaurant operators to move away from paper record-keeping and into digital record-keeping. Providing digital temperature monitoring was revolutionary in the healthcare industry, and its impact was widespread, possibly lifesaving. In agriculture, a game-changer was moving to battery-operated soil moisture sensing and remote valve control, thus freeing up farmers to do other work. IoT technology-enabled contact tracing during the COVID pandemic initial outbreak made the return to offices safer for employees and continues to be used by hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers as I write this.

It’s at least worth asking oneself the IoT.2 questions. Over time this might save companies a lot of time, pain, and money if they can hit the reset button now versus 4-5 years from now when their technology completely sunsets. Now is the time to look at this, ask the hard questions, and make the difficult decisions before sinking more investment into technologies and architectures that might have a cap to their scalability.

Refresh

If you’re due for an IoT.2 refresh, you don’t have to go it alone. A few years ago, you’d have to go out there and talk to a hundred people to find out what was available, but now there are plenty of IoT experts that can fill you in on everything IoT and have sorted through the vaporware for you. You no longer have to suffer through the bleeding edge. You could continue to do it yourself, but why? It won’t save you money. There are aggregators in IoT today. Find one of them and work with them. And it doesn’t need to be a long, drawn-out process. Within a couple of weeks or months, you can identify the next big step on your IoT journey, including a cost-effective way to rip and replace, scrap, and rebuild your new, more innovative empire.

IoT.2 has started, and the landscape has changed. It’s worth a new look with fresh eyes.

Warminster, PA — CalChip Connect (CCC) welcomes ADTRAN to its family of IoT gateway and sensor device product and solution offerings.

ADTRAN is best known in the industry for building business-grade reliable products. "We created our new LoRaWAN® product portfolio in support of our overall mission to provide affordable LoRaWAN connectivity to the commercial markets," said Keith Atwell, Head of Global Business Development.

The ADTRAN 7310-08 LoRaWAN IoT Gateway is ideal for use in enterprises, small businesses, and industrial IoT applications, typically in or around buildings. It offers eight channels, an external antenna, PoE powering and a Gigabit interface for ample backhaul performance. In addition, it can easily be configured via a Bluetooth® interface, eliminating the need for hard-wired connections. Monitoring range is significantly enhanced when the device is mounted and paired with a high gain external antenna.

"Our LoRaWAN product portfolio is certified with AWS and Senet and was developed to work seamlessly with the broader elements within the LoRaWAN ecosystem, like other gateways and sensors," said Atwell. The device provides a reliable connection to a public or private LoRaWAN network and is designed and built specifically for IoT machine-to-machine communications.

"We're very pleased to bring ADTRAN's product portfolio into our mix of high quality LoRaWAN devices," said TJ Rancour, President, CalChip Connect. Their products underscore the massive movement taking place where companies like us are working to connect consumers and industries with the highest performing solutions and devices available on the market today," said Rancour.

About Adtran

ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of open, disaggregated networking and  communications solutions that enable voice, data, video, and internet communications across any network infrastructure. From the cloud edge to the subscriber edge, ATRAN empowers communications service providers around the world to manage and scale services that connect people, places, and things. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by servicing providers, private enterprises, government organizations, and millions of individual users worldwide. Find more at ADTRAN, Linkedin and Twitter.