IoT Strategy with Sierra Wireless

Terence Caston with Sierra Wireless joined our host Ken Briodagh to discuss IoT strategy and best practices to leverage your business and make your customers happier. Terence, or “TC”, is the Director of Customer Success at Sierra Wireless, one of the leading manufacturers of IoT modules which has been around for more than 20 years. TC represents a business unit known as CCBU, Cloud Connectivity Business Unit, which provides connectivity through smart SIM technology, as well as application enablement and cloud connectivity.

The End of IoT

What makes for a good IoT implementation strategy? It seems like a lot of discussions around the IoT is about collecting data and doing analytics on that data. Despite all of the talk on this subject, this is not an end goal or a strategic outcome, but is just another means to an end, and it doesn’t seem like many companies are talking about where the end is. The answer of an end depends on where you are in the IoT ecosystem. If you are creating a solution to a known problem that deals more on sending and receiving alerts, then the analytical side of things may not be as important. But if you are getting into larger systems where you are looking to gain intelligence then the table shifts and the data becomes very relevant and almost an end itself.

Terence believes we are in a point in the IoT evolution where we need to be coming up with more turnkey ways to get the majority of the needs out of the way; and that is the connectivity aspect. Sierra Wireless has done a good job with their IoT strategy by providing either professional services that help build out a solution or providing an a la carte piece of it to let you “get in where you fit in.”

Customizing IoT for Your Business

Speaking on connectivity, TC makes sure his customers are not getting caught up in the hype of a particular network and are doing what is most beneficial to the area and needs they are operating out of. It is important to question which option will make your business better and scalable in the future, then choosing to deploy features or hardware based on that.

Terence sees that “we are so early in this ecosystem that a lot of our time is still spent in trying to pull together the right module, with the right application portal, with the right connectivity. And therefore, where our attention should be, we don’t really have the bandwidth to do it.” This idea of resources being used to make a solution possible, and then not having enough to actually do the solution is a very real thing and is very prevalent in the space today. Many companies are in this headspace of just trying to get something built, rather than thinking about the impact of what you’re going to do with it. You have many companies who come up with an idea and want to sell it. They easily spend 80% of their venture capitalists’ money on just engineering the product and forget about how they are going to market it.

Some good practices TC is seeing when it comes to an IoT strategy however, is companies who are looking to the solutions first. Finding a problem and creating a solution that will have a major impact, while still creating a product that is unique enough to drive a person to solve for that problem, is the factor making these companies successful and setting them up to be in the space for the long-haul. Those who employ smart marketers and really think about how they will go to market will have a great shot, but just banking on the technology alone won’t get you there.

We'll notify you bi-weekly about new podcast episodes, upcoming guests, and news. You can subscribe to the podcast and if you'd like to be considered to appear on the podcast contact us.