TDWI IoT Readiness Guide: Interpreting Your Assessment Score
July 29, 2016
Complete the assessment, determine your score, and use the information in this guide to judge your readiness for the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things (IoT)—a network of connected devices that collect and interpret data over
the Internet—is a hot and growing trend. Analysts predict that there will be tens of billions of these
devices by 2020. By some estimates, IoT will create $11 trillion of value by 2025. The goal of this
Readiness Guide is to help readers understand IoT and the critical factors that affect the success of
IoT implementations, especially how the data is analyzed and used. In fact, a primary focus of the
assessment is on data and analytics—what some industry experts call the “Analytics of Things.”
This guide accompanies TDWI’s IoT Readiness Assessment Tool, a survey that helps respondents
understand how prepared their organizations are to leverage an IoT implementation to change their
business model, improve operations, and improve the customer experience. When you complete the
online questionnaire, the assessment tool immediately provides you with scores that quantify your
organization’s IoT readiness.
This Readiness Guide provides a primer on IoT and IoT analytics readiness, an explanation of the
Readiness Model, and tips for interpreting your assessment scores. Although we recommend that you
read this guide before taking the assessment so you are prepared to interpret the scores displayed at
the end of the questionnaire, the guide and the tool can both be used independently, so you can work
with them in either order.
The Reason for an IoT Readiness Assessment
Interest in IoT and IoT analytics is growing. In a recent TDWI study, although slightly less than
20 percent of respondents are using IoT data today for analytics, an additional 34 percent are
planning to do so in the next three years. This indicates that a majority of organizations believe
that IoT can provide value for them—either by improving operational efficiencies or by increasing
the enterprise’s top line. Some view it as a competitive necessity.
Whatever the motivation, organizations are exploring IoT to see if it is right for them and if they are
ready to take the first step to implementing an IoT application. They have questions about what their
strengths and weaknesses are around IoT because some implementations can involve analytics, tools,
skills, and processes that their organization has not utilized before. The IoT Readiness Assessment
Tool and Guide provide answers for these questions.
When it displays your scores, the online assessment tool will also display an average of all people who
took the assessment, including those in your industry and at companies of similar size. That way, you
can look at the state of your readiness in isolation or you can add a dimension to that knowledge by
comparing your strengths and weaknesses to those of other organizations.
Thank you for reading this Readiness Guide and using the IoT Readiness Assessment Tool. I hope
you will find both useful.
Fern Halper, VP and senior director for advanced analytics, TDWI Research