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Arun Rishi Kapoor
Wearable technology creates new data monetization opportunities
"Humans are the best sensors and integrators of context. The wearable revolution augments things where we are deficient so that we can make sense of them." (J Schwan, Solstice CEO and Julian Sanchez, Director of John Deere's Technology Innovation Center, during a live chat on "wearable moments")
Offering customers instant insights based on their history of choices and predictive analysis opens up big opportunities for various business in the digital world. Wearable technologies such as smart bands/rings, Google Glass/VR lenses, nanomaterials etc. are opening up new dimensions of data monetization opportunities for digital and communications businesses. With several big data platforms and data processing techniques, the data transmitted from wearable solutions will revolutionize areas such as nursing, disease assessment, fitness and lifestyle. The real-time rich data collected from sensors attached to the human body now enables capabilities such as remote measurement, process control, testing and guidance to address health and lifestyle issues. And these can be done much faster than ever too. A health specialist can remotely manage and monitor your health and fitness, a coach can mentor an athlete and analyze their daily activities. We can remotely check-in on the well-being of our loved ones, such as elderly relatives, children and pets. Even a fashion designer can remotely take measurements and create you an outfit. There are numerous possibilities to collect data from wearable solutions and exploit it to derive usage patterns, reports and insights using near real-time querying, analytics and predictive models. This will bring a paradigm shift in our lives.
Making customer data useful
The five simple steps to extract the usefulness of the customer data are presented in the cycle below.
Understanding an individual’s need, identifying the various wearable solutions and data collection points (to suit the individual’s lifestyle and without affecting or interfering with daily tasks) while complying with privacy and security issues can establish distinct revenue streams for businesses. A value fabric or ecosystem including communication provider, sensor infrastructure vendors and application development agencies can deliver high quality observations and thus data monetization opportunities. In the example below, we see the various wearable solutions, where data can be collected, passed through various algorithms for processing and finally presented in a dashboard of insights and as a scorecard.
With so many companies diving into wearable electronics solutions and insights, it is expected that the industry will revolutionize various markets (software development, sensor, communications, marketing etc.) in the next 5-10 years. However, there are certain challenges which may hold this growth back. Some of the issues vendors may face include: With bigger involvement from digital business, wearable gadgets will find an easy way into the consumer market offering personalized information such as a visual summary, reports, key target metrics and collaborative online data for a smart lifestyle. As more and more devices are connected and with seamless real-time data flowing among them, newer insights will improve quality of life and completely change the perception of the technology-tagged human body.
