New study reveals how a variety of companies can generate new revenue from asset tracking

BI Intelligence

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Zebra Technologies, a leading provider of devices and systems for asset tracking, released a white paper on how different industries can combine traditional asset tracking solutions like sensors and tags with other technologies like mobile devices and data aggregation and analysis tools.

The paper detailed how different industries can gain new revenues and improve customer experiences with the combination of these technologies: 

• Transportation and logistics: Most trucks are only 70% full at any given time, the paper noted. That unfilled space represents $2.5 billion of revenue leakage per year for the trucking industry. Combining sensors and tags that provide data about the dimensions of different cargo and containers with systems that provide real-time data about empty space in a trucking fleet can help operators fill that empty space and recover much that revenue leakage. 
• Retail: Asset tracking devices and in-store beacons can give employees real time data about inventory and customers delivered through mobile devices. More than two-thirds (69%) of retailers are already giving employees mobile devices to provide this data on the go, allowing them to spend less time looking up information about inventory and shipments so they can spend more time with customers. 
• Healthcare: Using asset tracking with traditional systems for keeping medical records can improve patient care at healthcare facilities. For instance, collecting data from barcodes assigned to individual patients along with software systems for tracking medical records can reduce errors like giving patients the wrong medication or wrong doses by 42%.

Zebra Technologies already provides the asset tracking, bar code scanning, and enterprise mobile devices for collecting and sharing real time data for these use cases. The company said that it will try to enhance those offerings with other technologies like wearables, data visualization, virtual reality, and smarter sensors that can collect more kinds of data for these use cases.

The marriage of new technologies is another step in the IoT Revolution that continues to pick up speed. And when it does, it will change how we live, work, travel, entertain, and more.

From connected homes and connected cars to smart buildings and transportation, every aspect of our lives will be affected by the increasing ability of consumers, businesses, and governments to connect to and control everything around them.

Imagine “smart mirrors” that allow you to digitally try on clothes. Assembly line sensors that can detect even the smallest decrease in efficiency and determine when crucial equipment needs to be repaired or replaced. GPS-guided agricultural equipment that can plant, fertilize, and harvest crops. Fitness trackers that allow users to transmit data to their doctors.

It’s not science fiction. This “next Industrial Revolution” is happening as we speak. It’s so big that it could mean new revenue streams for your company and new opportunities for you. The only question is: Are you fully up to speed on the IoT?

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• IoT devices connected to the Internet will more than triple by 2020, from 10 billion to 34 billion. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) will comprise 10 billion.

• Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years.

• Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they will use IoT to 1) lower operating costs; 2) increase productivity; and 3) expand to new markets or develop new product offerings.

• Governments will be the second-largest adopters, while consumers will be the group least transformed by the IoT.


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