How to Develop an IoT Project? - 6 Efficient Steps

Updated on :October 17, 2023
By :Ganapathi. M

A certain Business Insider report predicts there will be more than 41 billion IoT devices by 2027. In the digital era, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a revolutionary impact on many vertical markets. Connecting and sharing data through an existing physical object to the internet.

The IoT aims to integrate with real-world objects, to create an interconnection with the virtual world of information. With its enormous capacity to collect data from the environment. It contributes to enhanced innovation, operational efficiency, improved customer relations, and other aspects of a business.

IoT is transforming everyday objects into a smart object that drives a better quality of life, optimizing business processes, and decisions based on relative context through networking. Smart devices have promising benefits of connecting devices from anywhere, with anyone at any time with objects that have access to the internet. In the age of information, security, and privacy implications escalated the deployment of an IoT application more challenging and time-consuming.

The computing, sensing, and identifying the real-world objects with the help of the internet, allows the objects to communicate. For example, electronic devices at home (Smart homes) can be accessed and controlled with mobile phones. IoT applications have been in several domains such as healthcare, retail, industrials, transportation, logistics, manufacturing, supply chain, B2B, B2C, and environment.

This article has an actionable process and best practices that help in figuring out the complexities, setting realistic goals, a roadmap of the implementation strategy, development, testing, and deployment for your first IoT project.

Business benefits of IoT Development 

Undoubtedly, IoT is an innovation in human to machine interaction. It has made the way of life more convenient and to solve grave issues in the marketplace. Businesses are utilizing IoT to the fullest potential while understanding the impact. It is essential to consider factors that can improve the effectiveness of the business case. IoT solutions can deliver benefits such as,

  • Automation and Control: Communication between the machinery is useful when automating regular tasks. Control through digital and wireless infrastructure with less or no human intervention results in the timely output. Leading to maintaining transparency, uniformity, and the quality of service.
  • Increase productivity: Productivity results in profit for any business. It improves labor efficiency, provides training for employees, and reduces mismatch of skills to increase productivity.
  • New Business opportunities: IoT is helping companies to increase new revenue streams and formulates innovative business models and approaches. IoT drives an increase in return on investment, efficient business cases, and also has the potential to transform the relationship between the business and its consumers beyond interactivity.
  • Cost & Time Saving: The adoption of IoT technology helps in optimizing the utilities and resources. Keeping the devices under surveillance, IoT alerts in the case of bottlenecks and damages in the machines. It saves valuable time and money for the business.
  • Improves Security: Another main advantage of IoT is monitoring. IoT is integrated with security cameras and sensors to ensure the security of the equipment and protect against physical threats.
  • Enhance Data Collection: Data is a vital source of information that helps to make better decisions. With the network of interconnected devices, you can easily store and access the data to evaluate your business achievements.
  • Efficient Asset utilization: IoT technology helps to improve the tracking of assets and offers real-time insights. Businesses are using IoT to locate issues on assets and run preventive measures for proper maintenance. Understanding the functionality and monitoring the natural resources leads to efficient asset utilization.

6 Steps to Build an Effective IoT Project 

  1. Understand the Business Case

IoT is a versatile technology that can be used in multiple ways. A strong business case should leverage simplicity and effectiveness. With all the details, it should articulate the potential risks and uncertainties for a robust foundation to start IoT development.

Self-evaluation, intensive audience research, business objectives, and other closely related aspects will give you more insight to determine the right solution your customers need.

Specify the purpose, underlying risks, and potential challenges, you can avoid downtime by processing and analyzing data to predict the outcomes and problems that may arise in the future to accelerate the effectiveness of the IoT project. Starting with a proof of concept can help to validate the budget and adds space for optimization and improvements.

  1. Select the Right IoT Technology

Keeping the business case in mind, this is another crucial part that ensures the success of your IoT project. If you're looking to scale your IoT solution, only the best choice of the platform enables the growth of the business. Choose a technology that grows and is adaptable to future advancements. Select tools that bridge the technical gaps that can effectively support IoT development.  

With the right tools, protocols, and frameworks, you can achieve seamless integration. IoT technologies fall under three primary segments, 

  • Sensors & microcontrollers
  • Internet Connectivity
  • Service platforms

Sensors are attached to devices and physical objects to collect data. Microcontrollers and Internet Connectivity share the information gathered through Sensors. Service platforms are personalized applications to control mechanisms for better B2B or B2C experiences. 

As there is high competence, keep adding new and advanced features to the business case. Identifying the functionalities in the early development stage can significantly improve the IoT development process. 

  1. Design a Comprehensive IoT Strategy

A solid IoT strategy brings out a detailed plan with all the layers of the technology stack, the features, audience, critical characteristics of the solution like sensors, processing, machine learning capabilities, cloud storage, and so on.

The IoT strategy should have clearly defined step by step process, specifying the details in each stage of the development process. A comprehensive IoT strategy should consider aspects as existing market challenges, maturity, Challenges in Deployment, device management, and market trends.

  1. Build and Execute an IoT Prototype

A prototype of your IoT project helps validate and discover the parameters you need before the final deployment. Developing a prototype is an initial process that helps in creating a clear roadmap to follow. 

This process can be challenging if you are new to IoT development. Still, there are tons of reliable resources, and you can also get help from IoT experts in platforms such as Stackoverflow, Particle Community, and Hackster.io are some of the popular ones. As it attributes essential elements to the final product, numerous companies launch a prototype to test what's working and what is not. Evaluating the ideas and making potential changes to the strategy for compelling scalability. 

  1. Scalability and Security is Paramount

Ensure the capabilities and possible features that accommodate growth and scalability. Companies should always plan ahead of time before getting into the road to develop a custom IoT solution. A good watch over market trends can help in making brilliant predictions about capacity and handling. Which can result in control over scalability, reduces risks, and pitfalls.

Security is a significant challenge in IoT development.

Designing a security and data protection strategy is no longer an option but a necessity to secure data in the cloud, data that is shared through connectivity, as well as physical devices. It should cover aspects such as policies, access, authentication, identity, privileges, and more. By accurately determining the validity of the endpoints can avoid data leakages, breaches, and cyberattacks.

To achieve scalability and security, you should focus on the right technology stack that allows future integrations, facilitates connectivity on the grand scale, enables speed and expansibility.

  1. Find your IoT Development Partner

If you're planning your IoT project, you may need to find a partner or IoT expert who can help you build your project. If you are not so familiar with IoT development, talk with an expert in IoT development.

An experienced development partner / IoT development company can help you handle the complexities and even manage your IoT project throughout the development. Analyze your skill sets to see what's missing and add value by hiring the right expertise who can successfully deploy your IoT project on time to market.

How Industries Use IoT for Transformation?

The IoT market is a vast landscape with impressive growth over the past couple of years. The adoption of cloud and edge computing has given rise to the usage of IoT in data management and analysis. Starting from Smartphones, GPS systems, home automation, the usage of IoT are leveraging transformation across various sectors.

Healthcare

IoT in healthcare has enabled life-saving potential in unreachable conditions. It is used in hospitals for better health management of the patients as well as used for self-monitoring. The IoT healthcare market is expecting to reach $140 billion by 2024. For instance, the equipment administrators receive alerts for maintenance and repairs of ventilator machines, cardiac monitors, MRI machines. The capabilities of wearable sensors and telemedicine have become more desirable to monitor and treat patients, especially in far and challenging regions. It also offers support for healthcare providers to stay alert between death and life situations. 

Automobile 

The automobile industry adopted the IoT technology quite early and has a triumphant return on investment. Over the past couple of years, the industry has invested over $100 billion on research and development for self-driving cars. IoT helps to improve the safety and performance of the vehicles. 

Automotive IoT solutions enable vehicles to update the user on real-time mechanical issues through a data communication system. Cars are increasingly incorporating IoT features that transmit usage, security, and data on the mechanical condition to users and manufacturers.   

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector has experienced the fastest growth with IoT. In a study conducted by Tech Pro Research, over 82% of the respondents have implemented IoT in industrial manufacturing. The machine learning capabilities and smart sensors in the manufacturing process are optimal for effective monitoring and maintenance of equipment. Smart manufacturing is to track factory assets, improve efficiency in operations, and increase analytics functionality.

Transportation

IoT in the transportation and logistics sector is used to provide enhanced business experience. GPS tracker is one of the most exceptional IoT solutions used to navigate things that are shipped or on transportation. Connecting the GPS tracker to the mobile phone, one can trace the current location and speed of the vehicle. Sensors attached to monitor, quality of the product, and if the cargo is arriving in the safest condition.  

Smart Homes

IoT has a significant impact on commercial buildings and residents. Smart homes and buildings are unleashing the potential to fully interconnect smart cities. The home automation systems, quick heating or cooling systems, lightings, security cameras are the famous examples of IoT solutions in the real estate industry. 

Energy & Utilities

IoT solutions deployed in energy and utilities industries are yielding better results. IoT is used to measure the drilling lines by oil and gas companies, imperative to optimize the process and minimize the expenditure. A smart energy grid ensures the communication between the energy grid and the consumer over the internet connection. 

Retail

IoT in the Retail sector has brought changes in shopping and E-commerce. Online shopping has altered the retail approach to the hilt. According to PWC research, 90% of retailers in the US are using or planning to use IoT to customize store visits. 

One of the famous examples is RFID and Beacon technologies. This IoT solution enables retail stores to provide location-based services to their customers. Registered customers receive notifications about the new offers and deals available in the store via a consumer app.

Challenges of IoT Development

The IoT devices continue to grow at a steady pace, which is likely more challenging to build a practical IoT project. One of the primary reasons why an IoT project fails is that businesses hardly understand the problem that needs a solution.

A successful IoT project is not an impossible mission, but it is imperative to analyze the problems faced by businesses and customers. The solution should try to solve the issues and also that are closely connected with the product. Here are some of the possible challenges and complexities in IoT development. 

  • Security
  • Data Storage
  • Platform compatibility
  • Standardization

Building a robust IoT solution that is standardized and reliable can be tricky with the rising number of communication protocols. Every business considers data as valuable. It is vital to ensure your system supports the massive flow of data, has the right database to store and analyze to derive value from it. 

Selecting a compatible platform poses another challenge due to the wide range of options available in the market. Committing to a single platform may put your IoT solution back, ensuring that the platform is not outdated as emergent technologies are continually entering into the market. 

Conclusion

IoT has managed to put itself on the forefront among all other emerging technologies. IoT development is a digital transformation that drives success for businesses across the globe. Companies are embracing the possibilities the IoT is offering to grow revenue and achieve business objectives. This pioneering technology is benefiting all the industries with a unique set of tools and platforms.

The essence of a successful IoT project demands in-depth planning, analysis, and strategy. Black holes in the deployment strategies will face complications and challenges, leading to unsatisfactory results. To avoid this, understand how the technology works, and how it can benefit your business by defining specific goals. By finding the top IoT development company, you can build a custom IoT solution that results in user-driven experience and improves customer satisfaction.

Ganapathi. M
Ganapathi. M

Ganapathi. M is the CEO of Agira Technologies. He is a Blogger, speaker, idea evangelist, and a man on a mission.  He has a track record of more than 14 years in the arena of technology. With an astounding passion for technology, he is helping numerous startups and SMEs grow. Being a natural thought leader, he is directing a team of dedicated technology experts at Agira.

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