Smart Products
To benefit from the vast potential of IoT products, manufactures need to capture value in a way that directly increases profitable revenue
The Internet of Things (IoT) wave has arrived. For manufacturing factories—the setting with the largest potential economic value—that could mean trillions in value by 2030.
The problem is many manufacturers start the smart product journey without a clear understanding of where or how to capture that value. A large percentage of IoT products fail—often because they lack a clear connection to business strategy and don’t make full use of available data. In our experience, many industrial companies also have disparate business models, sales models, and customer relationships. West Monroe has a fix for that.
The world’s best smart product teams are in a constant journey of strategy and delivery—so think of us as your experienced guide, ready to support you at any step. Whether you’re just getting your feet wet or fine-tuning current products to deliver greater value, we’ve got you covered.
We look at potential opportunities from every angle—customer and market, industry, and operations, technical, and functional—because that leads to more sustainable solutions.
We’ll also work with you to test ideas and bring the best ones to market. Because we see our role as launching your organization on a journey, we’ll work together—paring your resources with our experienced product designers and engineers—to create new services with innovative features, advanced data analytics, and enriching customer experiences. With each iteration, you’ll see the revenue and value potential of those services come to fruition.
What is a smart product?
A smart connected product is a physical object with computing capabilities that interacts with other devices and systems via a network. It can collect, process, and transmit data using sensors, processors, and communication technologies to offer improved efficiency, predictive maintenance, and remote monitoring. For example, a connected coffee machine can be controlled remotely, customize preferences through a mobile app, and use sensors to brew coffee to user preferences. This enhances the customer experience and generates new revenue streams through subscription services, data monetization, and affiliate marketing.
Results You Can Expect
- Fuel growth by unlocking revenue sources—such as product-as-a-service (PaaS), advertising, or aftermarket support.
- Reduce costs—for example, through better predictive maintenance, inventory management, or demand forecasting
- Increase customer retention by elevating their experience and engaging them in new ways
- Monetize data—tapping data embedded in products or by selling data to suppliers or brokers
- Sense and respond faster to market demand and change
- Advance sustainability goals by cutting waste and enabling circular design
What We Offer
Set your sights with a practical smart product strategy
The first step in realizing value from smart products is deciding where to play. We help you sort through the possibilities—using market and customer research, ideation workshops, and benchmarking to surface and explore opportunities for generating new revenue and maximizing profitability. Our proven tools—such as a smart product organization maturity model—make this process fast yet effective.
But we won’t just point the direction. We’ll help you understand the costs, required architecture, data requirements, and implementation complexity. Together, we’ll prioritize opportunities based on estimated business value, build a business prototype, and outline case for investment. Then we’ll produce a practical and achievable plan for delivering it—allowing your organization to move forward with confidence.
Design and build your smart product—and start seeing the value
When you’re ready to turn an idea into reality, we’re ready with an experienced team—one that understands how to deliver value sooner than later by using rapid iterations to introduce and then build upon the potential of a smart product.
We use proven resources to expedite delivery: highly flexible architecture and a reusable data services platform that allows plug-and-play integration; expertise in designing seamless experiences for customers, employees, and partners; effective master data management and analytics capabilities for getting maximum value from data; and a security-first approach that ensures you remain compliant with regulations and reduces the risk of data exposure.
But we don’t just build a product and hand it over. We believe in equipping your team to lead the journey in the future. Our approach emphasizes collaboration and mentoring throughout product engineering and delivery.
