Finding the Richest Markets for IoT Technology

The Challenge:

The market for IoT (Internet-of-Things) technology is vast and growing, with multiple potential applications across many sectors. A leading provider of the technology that enables IoT was experiencing this first-hand, with sales into nearly 20 different sectors. Yet with limited resources, they knew they needed a more focused approach – but on which markets? They needed hard facts and a methodical way to evaluate the many different markets, so they could know where to focus and how to grow their position within the best markets. Enter Skoping.

The Approach:

We started by identifying key criteria for evaluating market attractiveness.  We applied this to 5 key sectors (Industrial Automation, Physical Security, Building Automation, Medical Devices and Utilities).  We broke each sector down into the main sub-segments, functional areas and product lines, quantifying the size of them, identifying key trends, current adoption of IoT technology (if any) and the level of competition.  We then narrowed the scope to the most promising opportunities and then conducted deeper dive market research with decision makers for those product categories.  This helped determine their perceptions and interest in adding IoT technology and the key capabilities and pricing that would be necessary for them to seriously consider adopting it.  With this information, we developed forecasts of the top market sector opportunities, prioritized them based on attractiveness for our client and identified the critical product capabilities and action items that would be necessary to serve those markets.

The Result:

Skoping delivered detailed market assessments of all five sectors and 30 sub-categories within them.  The client finally had a clear understanding of the size, attractiveness and challenges of each one, giving them the facts they needed to determine where to focus their resources.  Prior to the project, they were planning on pursuing a new sector where they did not have any presence.  However, the market assessment showed that segment would be actually be slower to adopt IoT technology and would require significant investment.  By contrast, the work done by Skoping identified larger opportunities within two sectors where the client already competed that were easier to address, resulting in faster growth with fewer resources.

The Bottom Line:

The client applied their sales and marketing resources at the 2 sectors identified by Skoping and realized sizable revenue growth in both of them. They also modified their product offering, adding key features, enabling them to grow their position in another sector, which Skoping had identified as an attractive expansion opportunity.

Our experience in technology covers many areas, including displays, printing, scanning, retail/POS systems, applications software, robotics and augmented reality.

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