What does your company’s IoT Value Proposition sound like?
Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) manufacturing ecosystem mandates new value propositions leveraging the impact of data from your machinery, software and services on client value creation and business outcomes.
How does your current value proposition fit into your connected customers’ smart, data-driven manufacturing environments?
Perhaps it is time to retool your IoT value proposition depending on the industries, products and services you offer your customers.
Then again, perhaps it is time to recalibrate your value propositions according to the lifecycle stage in which your customers reside. Consider that:
- Even if you are not selling a sensor-enabled product, chances are you are selling that product or service into a sensor-enabled manufacturing and/or business environment. What is the impact of your product or service offering on that smart environment?
- Even if you are manufacturing or assembling a non-sensor enabled tool or component, your output undoubtedly will become part of a smart manufacturing environment. How can you demonstrate to your customers that you are aware of how your output creates value, as input, within their factory?
- Even if you are creating, selling or implementing a data-driven product, service or platform, it is not a standalone product. How interoperable is your product within the rest of the potentially IoT environment into which it is placed? Does your product, software or platform play nicely – and cost-effectively – with the other IoT-enabled products and services or is it a problem-child?
Today’s manufacturing environment is fueled by advances in technology that continue to integrate (infiltrate?) our lives with connected devices. The pace of technology development, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics is relentless.
If your value proposition is not an IoT value proposition, you and your company are not keeping up with your customers’ increasing connectivity. Over the long haul, that scenario makes you non-competitive.
An IoT value proposition retains many characteristics of your current selling value propositions. You still are focused on the tangible benefits customers receive when doing business with you and your company.
However, an IoT value proposition not only is focused on the business value of your offering. It focuses on the operational value of your offering. Your IoT value proposition focuses on the impact of your offering on your client’s success. It sets the stage for customer retention.
An IoT value proposition addresses the enduring value of all of the data that results from doing business with your company. That is one holistic value proposition. Is your company prepared to think bigger and connect your value proposition to your customers’?
Time to go back to the drawing board. This isn’t a marketing or sales exercise, either. It is a cross-functional, collaborative one. Those IT, technical and engineering folks? You know, the folks residing in those departmental silos whom you tend to marginalize? They are the best interpreters of what is happening in manufacturing and engineering as a result of the Internet of Things.
There is no better time to have a collaborative conversation with them than today. There is no better topic to tackle together than creating an IoT value proposition. Enjoy!
Then, take the next steps.
Planning your next team, corporate or association meeting? Searching for a one-on-one catalyst to get you unstuck? Engage me to present a One Millimeter Mindset ™ program! Delivered virtually or in-person. Contact me here.
I am an extroverted STEM professional and left-brain thinker specializing in professional innovation, cross-functional leadership and client retention. I catalyze professionals to translate across communication and collaboration disconnects. Become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant and strategically valuable to your organizations. Better serve each other first so you better serve your clients together. One millimeter at a time. My One Millimeter Mindset™ virtual and in-person speaking programs leverage Voice of the Customer design methodology and storytelling to move individuals, teams, departments and organizations one millimeter beyond yesterday’s tools and today’s professional comfort zones My playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Contact me here.
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