Today’s consumers expect personalised services and products that suit their individual situations and needs. They are also starting to expect meaningful and contextual interactions through their preferred digital channels and devices. For retailers with brick and mortar stores, this means grabbing hold of the opportunities that will drive better engagement, create new sales points and build brand loyalty.
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in what we now know as the “fourth industrial revolution” and the “second digital revolution”. By the year 2020, it is estimated that the number of connected devices in use worldwide will reach 20 billion.
The world is becoming increasingly dependent on machines and data. Analogue equipment is gradually being replaced with sophisticated devices, able to generate constant streams of valuable data, control processes, monitor environments and make predictions.
In Part 1 of our data analytics and the connected car series, we talked about the role that data will play in driving transformation across the transportation industry and in particular, connected vehicles.
When scientists and filmmakers shared their visions of the future in the 1960s, they imagined unmanned flying cars and superhighways sprawling across the sky. While some level of success has been achieved with aerial vehicles, it is the connected world that looks set to win the transportation race to the future.
In both the developed and developing world, huge volumes of waste are created daily. When you throw away a coffee cup or dispose of your newspaper, you might not pay much thought to how and when that waste is collected. However, it must be collected and managed efficiently and this can be a challenge for municipalities and waste companies throughout the world.
Deep beneath a manhole cover, miles away from its nearest hub, a smart meter wakes up, sends packets of analytic data into the cloud and goes back to sleep again. While this may not sound groundbreaking, the technology that drives this process is a breakthrough that is dramatically reducing costs and complexity and increasing flexibility for utility companies the world over.