Enterprises becoming ‘intelligent‘ with IoT investments

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.

Zebra Technologies Corporation, an innovator at the edge of the enterprise with solutions and partners that enable businesses to gain a performance edge, on Wednesday announced the results of its third annual “Intelligent Enterprise Index” which indicates a record 61 percent of enterprises worldwide are on the path to becoming “intelligent,” compared to only 49 percent in 2018.

This global survey analyzes 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. Their “Intelligent Enterprise” Index scores are calculated using 11 criteria that include Internet of Things (IoT) vision, adoption, data management, intelligent analysis and more.

Based on these criteria and driven by an overwhelming pressure to improve the customer experience, retail organizations have gained the most momentum in the last 12 months, graduating from the bottom of the 2018 vertical Index rankings to nearly the top of the 2019 list, second only to Healthcare.

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 (17) percent of organizations with at least 250 employees crossed this threshold in 2019 versus only 11 percent in 2018. Interestingly, 37 percent of surveyed small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) with 50-249 employees scored 75 points or greater on the Index, indicating SMB with an IoT vision are in many cases more “intelligent” than large enterprises.

“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,” said Drew Ehlers, Global Futurist, Zebra Technologies. “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. 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.”