IoT investment on the increase

Following the COVID-19 lockdown, the survey found that 35% of organisations reduced their investments in IoT while a larger number of organisations are planning to invest more in IoT implementations to reduce costs.

One reason behind the increase is that while companies have a limited history with IoT, IoT implementers produce a predictable ROI within a specified timeframe. “They use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their business outcomes and for most of them they also specify a time frame for financial payback of their IoT investments, which is on the average three years,” said Benoit Lheureux, research vice president at Gartner.

In addition, as IoT investments are relatively new, most companies have plenty of “low hanging fruit” cost-saving opportunities to pursue, such as predictive-maintenance on commercial and industrial assets like elevators or turbines, and optimisation of processes such as increasing manufacturing yield.

Digital Twins and AI Drive IoT Adoption

As a result of COVID-19, 31% of survey respondents said that they use digital twins to improve their employee or customer safety, such as the use of remote asset monitoring to reduce the frequency of in-person monitoring, like hospital patients and mining operations.

The survey showed that 27% of companies plan to use digital twins as autonomous equipment, robots or vehicles. “Digital twins can help companies recognise equipment failures before they stall production, allowing repairs to be made early or at less cost,” said Mr Lheureux. “Or a company can use digital twins to automatically schedule the repair of multiple pieces of equipment in a manner that minimises impact to operations.”

Gartner expects that by 2023, one-third of mid-to-large-size companies that implemented IoT will have implemented at least one digital twin associated with a COVID-19-motivated use case.

The enforcement of safety measures has also fuelled the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise. Surveyed organisations said they have applied AI techniques in a pragmatic manner. Twenty-five per cent of organisations are favouring automation (through remote access and zero-touch management), while 23% are choosing procedure compliance (safe automation measures) in order to reduce COVID-19 safety concerns. For example, organisations can monitor work areas using AI-enabled analysis of live video feeds to help enforce safe social distancing compliance in high-traffic areas such as restaurants and manufacturing lines.