Smart Business

Chapter 6. Competitive Differentiation

Leveraging the Internet of Things in daily operations can help your small business become more sustainable and gain an edge on the competition. The remote sensing capabilities associated with many IoT-based solutions can help pinpoint when, where, and how resources are being consumed. Cloud-based analytics associated with those solutions can help managers and business owners to contextualize that data and make better decisions on resource deployment. Many of these solutions even come with controls to help management remotely optimize operations. Altogether, these solutions can help a small business save time, labor, and resources and become more resilient—especially as shortages in the market increase the price and scarcity of these key business inputs.

The result is an improved operating margin, which can give you the upper hand. In this enviable position, you can lower prices on your offerings to make them more competitive, or you can reinvest the savings in ways that help your small business gain or maintain an edge in the marketplace. Most companies would love to be in that position. Let’s take it a step further, though. What if you could put your customers in the same position?

Giving Products an Edge with IoT

How might you incorporate IoT into your products or services to offer customers a more unique, sustainable, and financially rewarding experience? Could you develop Internet-enabled features that give them unprecedented visibility ...