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Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and data science seem inevitable to unlock the digital future. Do you want to jump on the bandwagon? Slow down, take a step back and ask yourself: Do you really know where to start? Does your idea really fit your organization? Sneak Peek: Failure is part of the process and concrete business value doesn’t come easy.

According to Gartner, by the end of 2024, 75% of enterprises will shift from piloting to operationalizing Artificial Intelligence (AI), driving a 5 times increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures. Is your digital transformation journey about to begin? Great! However, getting started can be tricky. The big question is: how do you find a suitable AI use case and how do you know it’s the right one to kick off your digital journey? Our AI experts from Siemens Advanta identified 10 steps to find your first AI use case.

First off, don’t give in to the temptation of just using that cool technology you saw at a conference or of copying that fancy solution your competitor went for. Go for an ACTUAL challenge of your organization! This will help you build an ACTUAL project as opposed to a hobby: have a real “customer”, get a commitment, search for support, and a pull from the organization. Also, keep in mind that hobby projects are the first thing to be cancelled once operational pressure builds up. Working on a real pain point insulates your project from being stopped prematurely.

Before even looking at the data, there must be a shared understanding of the goal of the AI use case within the team. Merely “analyzing the data” is not going to work! The common understanding of what you want to achieve needs to be directly attached to the business problem: Go back to your organization’s strategy or major pain point and align potential use case outcomes (e.g., a strategic goal of a more bespoke marketing can be achieved by understanding different types of customers based on their purchasing behavior). New ways of ideation and innovation such as design thinking can be the right approach here.

The healthcare industry holds one of the most significant investment opportunities for IoT technology ventures. We have observed its growth for years as investors keep leveraging better diagnostic and treatment ideas. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot more attention to the sector, and several digital health innovations emerged in 2020 in response to it. These IoT related solutions include applications that help with contact tracing, remote diagnostics and remote patient monitoring. We anticipate that the IoT new trends in this sector in 2020 will still be relevant in 2021, especially with the emerging need for vaccine cold chain management. These innovations will stay with us even beyond 2021 and will keep addressing various other health care challenges – supporting our ability to manage healthcare systems effectively.

Will we ever have an Artificial General Intelligence – an AI that can solve any problem, just like a human brain? This is highly disputed. Still, nobody contests the fact that today’s AIs perform well on specific, and sometimes very complex, problems. Make sure the selected challenge you want to tackle is defined in a way that is susceptible to AI. It has to be a data problem, such as:

• identifying anomalies
• grouping together entities that have similar features
• predicting outcomes

Formulate your problem as a data problem!

The data you use must fit the task, it must be sufficient in volume and quality and it needs to be accessible. If the data is not in shape, your use case will not get off the ground. Problems with the data can typically be fixed, but the fixes are all too often neither fast nor cheap. Processes might have to be changed and systems or IT landscapes adapted before you can get started. Plan significant effort to get the data in shape and ask the right questions early!

If you’re not in a research and development department, you are unlikely to get your AI use case funded or supported beyond a certain stage, unless there is a reasonable business case for the envisioned solution. This can be a daunting exercise. Estimating the potential benefits is already quite hard, determining the costs correctly is typically even more tricky (see our ROI whitepaper). If you manage to specify the benefits of your use case, you enable your whole organization to see the potential of the investment. For instance, increasing process efficiency or reducing manual efforts in your organization will provide you with the buy-in you need.

Your digitalization journey is a learning journey – not only for you, but for most of the organizations out there. There are chances that your first use case might turn out differently as originally envisioned. Although total failure is a somewhat extreme scenario, partial rather than full success is the likely outcome. Be prepared to adapt! You might not end up with what you initially craved for, but when adapting learnings early on, your partial success might turn out to be exactly what your company needs.

Since this is the first step in your digitalization journey, nobody expects a full-blown victory. Nevertheless, flat-out failure will not help you getting support for the next idea. Make sure to learn on the way so that you can either stop early or adjust. This will help you to give positive traction to digitalization efforts in your company and gather promoters to support you.

Don’t let overwhelming organizational complexity hold you back in kicking-off your use case! Rather select a small and manageable subset, like a small region, a specific business unit, a selection of products or a particular type of customer. This will allow you to prove the value of your solution to the stakeholders while you learn about the important opportunities and threats at the same time.

If your use case proves valuable, you don’t want to stay limited to this small subset! Ideally, your case can be swiftly adopted to be scaled to larger regions or more business units. This also means you need to balance efforts to standardize processes, document your initial steps and have productive infrastructure and operations in mind early so they can easily be applied to the expanded scope.

For many business stakeholders, the journey of finding the first AI use case still needs to be demystified. Surely, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The success of an AI project heavily relies on individual characteristics of your organization, its stakeholders and available data. As every journey is unique, it is important to start by answering the right questions early on and manage expectations. The potentials of Artificial Intelligence remain huge. However, often a trusted partner is needed to create transparency on the benefits of machine learning and other technologies for your business. Learn how we can leverage advanced analytics to create value here.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the key tech trends in recent years. By connecting devices to collect and share data, IoT is one of the strongest enablers to accelerate digital transformation. So, whether you are considering to improve your factory’s production capacity, the maintenance of rail systems, or urban live support systems – from transportation and health, to energy consumption and safety, the adoption of IoT technology will provide tremendous benefits for business and society.
Based on our experience with clients, we at Siemens Advanta analyzed the top IoT business trends regarding relevant markets and technologies empowering you to leverage these IoT future trend insights when embarking on your digital transformation journey in 2021.

Manufacturing companies traditionally depend on human presence to physically operate their machines – especially when there are issues that need onsite fixing. With advancing factory digitalization, IoT emerging solutions will become relevant in this regard resulting in less need for human to human interaction. This IoT business trend increases people’s safety, raises efficiency, and reduces costs. Once you have your devices connected, remote monitoring and asset management can be easily handled from remote locations. Our Underground Network Solutions are a best practice example how metropolitan cities can use IoT solutions for predictive and prescriptive maintenance purposes and beyond. And the opportunities are endless, adding for example Robotics and Drones to improve and automate business processes.

Our second IoT business trend already is and will be even more the power couple of the year: AIoT. The Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) combines AI with IoT – two independent, powerful technologies which accelerate each other’s capabilities.

But why is it so revolutionary? While IoT digitizes the physical world and brings data together, AI uses that data to make sense out of the big amount of information and to control the overall system. Empowered by Machine Learning (ML), it supports the overall data analytics process and data management. Our projects proof that the marriage of these two technologies makes perfect sense – more than that, it’s inevitable in order to achieve real business benefit. The combined forces open doors for new use cases and business opportunities. And the trend is upward. According to Gartner, 80% of IoT projects will have an AI component by 2022. Our clients know: IoT is good, AIoT is even better.

The healthcare industry holds one of the most significant investment opportunities for IoT technology ventures. We have observed its growth for years as investors keep leveraging better diagnostic and treatment ideas. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot more attention to the sector, and several digital health innovations emerged in 2020 in response to it. These IoT related solutions include applications that help with contact tracing, remote diagnostics and remote patient monitoring. We anticipate that the IoT new trends in this sector in 2020 will still be relevant in 2021, especially with the emerging need for vaccine cold chain management. These innovations will stay with us even beyond 2021 and will keep addressing various other health care challenges – supporting our ability to manage healthcare systems effectively.

With our society currently challenged with enormous environmental issues, there has been increased pressure for businesses to adopt sustainable practices – a trend pushed by various policy initiatives such as the European Green Deal which aims at making Europe climate neutral by 2050. Working with our clients, we see the rising demand to integrate environmentally friendly solutions. The target is to save resources and raise efficiency: Do more with less! We are convinced that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT will be key to serving that sustainability purpose.

There are already a good number of dedicated IoT solutions that help leverage smart data to maximize city potential as well as unlock the power of digital technology for increased sustainability and efficiency. And we project that by utilizing more data generated from such IoT solutions, it will become possible to improve emergency response times, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve quality of life.

In edge computing, data is not sent to the cloud for analysis and processing, but it’s analyzed as it is received on-device. This way, businesses deliver large amounts of data, ensuring real-time analytical readiness using a tailored data model. Edge computing is not a new kid on the block, but the demand for this technology and its applications has dramatically risen over the last year, especially with the rising amount of cyber-attacks. It’s time for the supply to catch up and keep its critical infrastructure safe. 

The pre-2020 networks were not designed to accommodate the 2020 style of conducting business. In 2021, we anticipate that businesses will demand more edge computing solutions as their structures change from the bottom up, which will lead to more innovative solutions. Businesses that make use of this technology are likely to gain an edge, develop opportunities, increase responsiveness and thrive in times of disruption.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is not a new phenomenon. More and more companies are relying on RPA technologies, but it often remains with the automation of isolated processes. The big challenge lies in the scalability and a company-wide, holistic use of RPA. This is where Hyperautomation goes a step further. Hyperautomation, a Gartner-influenced term, refers to an approach that combines robotics with other technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Everything that can be automated, should be automated. The ideal state is an all-encompassing, intelligent integration; a "digital twin" of all process and thus of one's own organization with visualized processes, metrics and data analysis. 

Hyperautomation is a concept that increases a company's competitiveness and positions it to be more resilient and robust – especially important in times of crisis. It has immense potential, which will become increasingly important in 2021, and beyond. Thus, it is our well-deserved IoT emerging trend number 6.

With IoT technologies now being used to monitor traffic, operate public amenities, and manage buildings, smart cities are no longer a thing of the future. There are countless applications of IoT in the automation of cities, a concept that we are already making a reality through our Siemens Digital City Solution. In 2021, we anticipate that this IoT emerging trend will continue to grow, as local governments realize smart cities are more resilient and better equipped to deal with unforeseen large-scale crises.

Two areas where this shift will be very visible is smart public transport and energy management. For example, IoT technologies are expected to provide a better understanding of the need of citizens and their patterns of movement.  Our smart city solution, Campus Control Center, is already addressing many of these challenges.

It’s estimated that food demand will increase between 59% to 98% by 2050. Although this might sound overwhelming, smart farming and agricultural IoT emerging trends provide us with a way out. IoT technologies have already been helping farmers beat climate uncertainty, crop disease, and increase yields exponentially for a while. These innovations also help farmers minimize costs by properly managing resources such as fertilizer or water, which can significantly increase profits while avoiding to harm to the environment.

In 2021 and beyond, we will witness the increased use of the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology in smart agriculture. This technology is great for collecting data about the weather, soil moisture and chemical compositions of the soil at a significantly lower cost compared to traditional methods. And finally, let’s not forget about controlled environment agriculture (CEA). It’s is expected to boost food production by allowing crop farming in areas that would otherwise be naturally unsuitable.

In recent years, IoT and blockchain have been rising to fame side by side.  So, it comes as no surprise that these two fields have the potential to significantly empower each other.

The rise of IoT adoption has been coupled with some security and data reliability concerns. Interestingly, the 2020 COVID-19 crisis has pushed businesses towards a speedier IoT adoption, leaving these concerns on the sidelines. As 2020 was the year of quick adoption, 2021 is likely to be the year when security catches up to it. Here is when blockchain steps in. Blockchain is synonymous with data integrity and its combination with IoT can reveal many business opportunities. It can enhance IoT by its unique way of sharing that ensures information is reliable and traceable. Sources of data can be easily identified, and data remains unchangeable – increasing trust in IoT.
This power couple can facilitate numerous end-to-end solution opportunities throughout 2021, so definitely stay on the lookout for that.

The events around the coronavirus pandemic have shown how vulnerable our society is. Once again, those who took care of their company's digital strategy in time have emerged as "winners". In a recent study, 84% of respondents claim that IoT was a critical factor for business continuity. Fortunately, times of crisis have the characteristics to catalyze developments. This is also the case in the field of IoT and digitalization. In fact, it has been confirmed that Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of IoT.

In times of massive disruption, technological evolution, and unforeseen events, it is up to the companies to build processes and systems that enable the entire enterprise to be agile. Resilient businesses are able to quickly adapt to changing situations and adjust their business processes. They must be empowered to make quick decisions based on data. The availability, processing and analysis of data is crucial here for rapid responsiveness, and this is where IoT and, above all, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a decisive role.

IoT future trends promise to improve efficiency and growth in various fields with a significant impact on both economy and society. To remain relevant and competitive, it is crucial for businesses to take action and take the first steps in order to leverage the opportunities that IoT provides today – and even more in the future.