With growing Internet of Things (IoT) investments, a record 61 per cent enterprises globally are on the path to becoming ‘intelligent’, compared to only 49 per cent in 2018, a new survey by Zebra Technologies said.
Zebra Technologies’ annual ‘Intelligent Enterprise Index’ survey analyses the extent to which companies connect the physical and digital worlds to drive innovation through real-time guidance, data-powered environments and collaborative mobile workflows.
“When we launched the Intelligent Enterprise Index three years ago, many enterprises were trying to understand where and how IoT solutions could be best applied within their unique business environments. We now see more urgency to improve operational visibility and facilitate the delivery of actionable intelligence all the way to the edge of the enterprise,” Drew Ehlers, Global Futurist, Zebra Technologies, said in a statement.
Retail organisations have gained the most momentum in the past 12 months, graduating from the bottom of the 2018 vertical index rankings to nearly the top of the 2019 list, second to healthcare.
“I believe that is why enterprises are now demonstrating a much greater commitment to executing their IoT plans and why we’ll likely see a surge in investments over the next few years,” Ehlers added.
The number of companies defined as truly ‘intelligent enterprises’ by achieving a score of 75 points or greater on the index has also risen year over year. Seventeen per cent organisations with at least 250 employees crossed this threshold in 2019 versus only 11 per cent in 2018.
Thirty seven percent small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with 50-249 employees scored 75 points or greater on the index, thus, indicating SMBs with an IoT vision are in many cases more ‘intelligent’ than large enterprises.
