IoT Consulting & Discovery

A successful IoT project starts not with choosing a platform or hardware, but with understanding what data needs to be collected, how it will be used and what role the system is meant to play in the operation of the enterprise. At the planning stage it is important to account for the specifics of the equipment, the requirements for monitoring and dispatching, the structure of the sites, the volume of telemetry, security requirements and the prospects for further development.

This approach matters especially for projects where equipment from different manufacturers has to be integrated, several sites brought into one monitoring system, or a platform built for resource metering, dispatching and analytics. Mistakes at the stage of choosing the architecture, the integration methods or the organisation of data flows can make the system considerably harder to scale after launch and lead to additional costs later.

We analyse the existing equipment, data transmission channels, available exchange protocols, current dispatching systems and the software already in use at the enterprise. We separately assess the composition of the telemetry, how often data arrives, the requirements for historical storage and how users will work with the system.

During the discovery phase we define the architecture of the future solution, the structure of the platform, the principles of working with data, the user roles and how the individual components interact. This is where the view takes shape of how monitoring, dispatching, reporting, analytics and integration with the enterprise's other information systems will be organised.

Integrations get considerable attention. We assess the possibility of working with ERP, BAS, CRM, billing systems, analytics platforms and other internal services. Where needed we define API requirements, data exchange mechanisms, synchronisation rules and scenarios for automating business processes on the basis of data received from the equipment.

For multi-site systems, scaling is worked through separately. We analyse the potential growth in the number of sites, users, devices and volumes of telemetry. Architectural decisions that keep the platform stable as the project grows and new locations are connected can then be made before development begins.

The result of IoT Consulting & Discovery is not a set of formal documents but a coherent view of the future system. The client receives a justified solution architecture, a list of functional components, requirements for integrations and infrastructure, an assessment of the implementation stages and a project roadmap. Technical and management decisions then rest on real data, and the risks at the following stages drop considerably.