Are You Ready for the Machine-to-Machine Revolution?

As Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “an ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.” It’s a fitting statement to describe today’s hyper-competitive world, where sensing and responding to changing trends in real time – aka the “sentient” enterprise – dictates whether a business survives and thrives. And now that the smart phone revolution has placed the power of the web at one’s fingertips, we have a better understanding of how the machine-to-machine (M2M) revolution impacts the power of the sentient enterprise.

Imagine a refrigerated cabinet or vending machine able to communicate its state, announcing if it is powered on, at the right temperature, well stocked, with the right product mix, at the right location, how shoppers interact with it, if it is due for routine maintenance and so on.

Now imagine millions of such machines worldwide, adding up to a sizeable business for a company.  Imagine each machine offering shoppers the ability to pay for the product in multiple smart ways through other devices (smart phones, smart cards, touch screen, etc). Imagine the enterprise being able to remotely and dynamically tune the machine with advertising, pricing, promotions, bundling, language and currency.  Imagine the machine tailoring an offer to a shopper that it recognizes as a loyal customer (if the shopper allows it).

The ability to glean real time shopper insight, optimize retail locations, make the supply chain efficient and effective and to generate a high return on assets seems like a marketing and operations dream. This smart asset scenario is well within reach of M2M.

The other side of this scenario involves a mobile asset such as a reefer (a refrigerated container) on a vessel in the ocean, on a railcar, or on a trailer on the road.  Tracking a mobile asset like a reefer across its lifecycle as its changes multiple hands and ensures that it maintains its state (and the state of its contents) is extremely valuable to the entire value chain.  This ensures timely supply, proactive notification and planning and faster processing of claims.  Configuring a container to ensure it remains connected via satellite and terrestrial networks means it can provide real time intelligence, in a cost effective way.

The power of a connected car or vehicle is obvious, since in-vehicle services for drivers have been around for some time.  Connecting these “connected” cars and trucks to enterprises that wish to push a range of employee services like smart parking, green incentives, flexible insurance, field service requests, emergency notifications enders the corporation with the fleet smart and sentient.  The benefits to the corporation come in multiple forms.

The power of the mobile web is nowhere more obvious than in emerging economies where significant populations have been empowered by mobile technology, enabling them to leapfrog the wired stage of growth entirely.  It also enables vast numbers of micro businesses to join the business network of a large enterprise and be included financially as well.  Low cost devices can provide a range of simple services (order management, contacts, service tracking, payments, micro-banking, etc.) and the connection to the enterprise leads to enormous savings in supply efficiency and rapid business growth as the enterprise becomes suddenly and acutely aware of the collective needs for products across millions and millions of small businesses.  A number of large corporations are waking up to this reality.