How M2M Applies To The Everyday Workforce
By Cheryl Knight, contributing writer
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology is enhancing field service — and the customer experience they want to create for their clients.
M2M offers many benefits to businesses, including better business intelligence, higher customer engagement, more efficient business processes, and stronger innovation. Machine Research predicted an increase of M2M connections to 2.3 billion by the year 2020, a marked increase from 135 million in 2011. This year alone, the revenues from M2M services are expected to reach $4 billion, according to Amdocs in a Business2Community article.
One area that has seen M2M growth is the telecom industry. Telecom leverages M2M in location technology, which helps cable companies track the movements and behaviors of their technicians, and connect with handheld devices used by technicians for invoicing and service confirmation in the field and for the transmitting diagnostics from cable boxes.
M2M will also impact field service through the development of smart vehicles. According to an M2M Now article, vehicles connected to the Internet will warn drivers of crashes ahead and alert them when they are speeding. The sale of a used vehicle can include tracking its history via data stored in the cloud. Magnus Lundgren, VP of the Connected Cloud for Ericcson, says, “If you need to provide support for a product that needs long-term care and maintenance, often by different parties; involves multiple sub-systems, each with their own different rates of evolution or failure; and, in particular, will be owned by multiple users during its life in possibly different countries, then the idea of abstracting data and many other functions makes perfect sense. You not only protect the customer’s investment, but you also make it much easier for all the other players involved.”
What To Include With M2M Solutions
M2M lends itself to many different applications, but the increased flow of data that the M2M process brings can overwhelm those who are not prepared to handle it. So, those companies that invest in predictive and analytical systems to help manage the increased data flow can make the process easier. This allows an organization to gather, analyze, view, and put to best use the data they receive from their M2M system.
In a guest post for M2M World News, Eva Enanoria of Leading Quest point out network troubleshooting and support, security issues, overcoming interoperability conflicts, and matching the right user model with your customer’s needs are also considerations.