TAKE THE CUSTOMER DIGITALLY BY THE HAND AND ASSESS THE PROJECT HOLISTICALLY

Our client already has expertise in the electronics sector and a high motivation to drive digital transformation – an important constant for change. Against this background, the challenge of the current times and of many Manufacturing companies is often as follows: The product leaves the factory and is perhaps still defined up to the »point of sale«. Oftentimes it then disappears from the company's field of vision. This of course raises questions regarding acceptance on the market: How does the customer use a product? What is the feedback on the use of the product? And how can the user experience be improved or even monetized? The magic word is the Internet of Things – IoT! IoT creates a digital ecosystem that not only raises a product portfolio to a digital level and can promote important changes in the way a company thinks but also connects manufacturers and customers in a new way.

The situation at the customer was as follows: The diverse, non-digital product portfolio and the planned new products represented a high degree of complexity in terms of the devices and means involved – gateways, cloud computing, and applications. Here it was necessary to find and implement a scalable solution.

The technical side is one thing. The other is the desire for more understanding for the consumer and knowledge of the actual use of the products. Measurable data from these areas would mean that the handling and wear of products could be better adapted to reality. Customer needs can be served faster and the experience with the product can be designed individually and nuanced. This is made possible by Voice User Interface devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home or by feeding in daily updated data such as weather forecasts.

HOW IOT REDUCES DIGITAL PAIN AND DRIVES THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DIGITAL MARKET

Customer requirements could only be met with a customized solution through a combination of specially created platform software and the use of cloud software components or Platform-as-a-Service models (PaaS). The platform we redesigned is based on a state-of-the-art microservice architecture that allows us to respond flexibly to all IoT product scenarios. 

An important factor in the implementation is the future use of the globally available AWS infrastructure to be close to the users of the products. This decision favors the ability to adapt the data storage of the collected data to the respective countries in accordance with data protection regulations. In addition, PaaS models play a very important role in the cloud. The resulting modular system is automated by using the AWS Cloud, and in the long term, this avoids additional manual effort. As a tailor-made solution, the cloud thus represents an investment that pays for itself both through sustainability and through a flexible degree of automation – in the truest sense of the word. 

The IoT services of the products running in the backend can be used by the end user via the IoT app. Once set up, it is the control center for all existing and future products. The IoT platform adapts flexibly to the growing product portfolio.

IOT AS A DRIVER FOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The operational IoT platform is not just a technological solution; it is a part of an integrated product ecosystem into which product strategy and product portfolio are integrated. By building this platform, we have together taken an important step toward digital transformation. Technologies are interchangeable and represent only a temporary challenge. Building digital awareness involves real cultural change, which only works if the people who are supposed to use the platforms really get involved. This is a milestone for our client. 

TECHNOLOGY VS. KNOWLEDGE EMPOWERMENT 

»In the middle instead of just there« – the integration of all participants helps to intrinsically drive the motivation for digital transformation. In this way, knowledge is not simply siphoned off, but rooted in the company itself. The composition of our project team reflects this – be it Cloud Architects, Developers, Electrical Engineers, or UX Designers. Following the motto »fail fast, learn and adapt often«, we have left old monoliths behind us and have been able to make a lasting contribution to cultural change on the customer side. Existing silos in product development were overcome and distributed teams were brought closer together – across five locations. 

TAILOR-MADE CLOUD ARCHITECTURE MEETS CROSS-TIER TEAMWORK

From the start of the project, the requirement was to design the product electronics and the connection of the various communication channels via Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Wifi such that a uniform IoT broker could also be guaranteed in the future. The company's own Electrical Engineers were called in to carry out the project. This approach was crucial in order to simplify work processes and keep communication channels short. With regard to the IoT Broker, the AWS service IoT Core was used, which links the various communication channels using standardized technologies without being proprietary.   

In the backend, we used best practices in terms of event-driven processing of large amounts of data for the design and implementation. The focus was on the continuous use of a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda in order to maintain the advantages of minimal operating expenses as well as the ability of continuous and unlimited scalability on a global level. The queueing of the data streams is supported by AWS Kinesis; for the separation of write and read tasks, we decided to use the AWS databases DynamoDB and Aurora. This made it possible to build a resilient, scalable, and distributed platform that can be evolutionarily updated and further developed in individual modules.

Our own Electrical Engineers ensure that the electronics to be used find the right way into the cloud.

A customized IT architecture offers flexibility and scalability. This means that the platform will not become an old digital shoe tomorrow.

Smart Home via the cloud: Increase the user experience of customers and at the same time collect information about usage and preferences in compliance with data protection regulations.

The IoT platform app is based on a hybrid app approach. The »learn once, write anywhere« principle makes it possible to avoid unnecessarily generalizing the peculiarities of mobile operating systems. In addition, it allows a targeted approach to the challenges of the use cases. Thus, the composition of open-source frameworks and custom code components has resulted in a modular app. The platform idea combines conformity, ubiquity, and economies of scale. These extend across all components – from the backend to the app. 

From cloud vendor selection for IoT, support in identifying the first product implementation in a smart context, showing the scenarios, deriving the use cases, to defining the first MVP: We accompanied every single phase of the implementation – strategically, tactically, and operationally. In the end, we derived the architecture-relevant quality criteria from the MVP use cases in the business view, which we transferred into a business-driven microservice architecture using domain-driven design. New products can be easily integrated into the IoT platform in the future. IoT will further close the gap between product and customer, promoting digital change.

An IoT platform brings customers and products closer together and enables companies to respond much more accurately and precisely to customer requirements.

Technologies have an expiration date – but a newly created digital mindset does not.