1. Innovation level
When seeking partnerships with external companies, consider where you are in the IoT maturity model. Are you embedding network connectivity into products you're already selling, or are you designing and developing your company's first product? Does the product need to interact with your current infrastructure, or do you need to build a completely new IoT system from scratch?
Another important point to note here is that by working with as few design/development companies as possible, you can save costs and speed up time to market.
This is because if you have one company handling firmware, one handling application development, and another handling hardware, the likelihood of poor communication increases. You might end up with firmware written for obsolete hardware because team members haven't collaborated effectively.
2. What functions does your product actually require?
The first thing we do on any IoT project is ask: What features are essential for your product to function? This applies to both brand new devices and existing products that you want to connect to the network.
For example, does your product really need a mobile app, or could you simply design the hardware to provide the functionality users need to avoid IoT app fatigue? Or, if you have a solid plan to use it to generate recurring revenue for your product, such as adding a subscription service to smart home devices, then adding a mobile app might be a good option.
Many clients are interested in machine learning (ML) services. While machine learning can be a great addition as it opens the door to generating recurring revenue, building data pipelines and training models is a significant investment. This is especially true if you want to run these models at the edge.
3. Potential cost-benefit trade-offs
Once you've determined the essential features of your Minimum Marketable Product (MMP), you can begin discussing cost-saving trade-offs. For example, off-the-shelf hardware is almost always cheaper than developing custom hardware, but you may have to make sacrifices in certain features or hardware design.
You might also look at things like integration points, which can easily increase the cost of IoT projects. More third-party integrations not only increase costs, but the quality of their APIs can also be a huge bottleneck.
4. Certification and Compliance
Finally, you'll need to consider certifications and compliance. It might be tempting to leave this step until the very end of the project, but we don't recommend it. By considering compliance testing applicable to your product upfront, you'll save significant time and money. This way, you can design and develop products that meet these standards, rather than trying to modify immutable things like custom hardware after the fact.
At Very, we follow compliance best practices, such as pre-compliance testing; however, stricter requirements almost always lead to higher costs compared to less stringent products. Medical devices requiring HIPAA compliance are a prime example, where we will have to invest more time in information governance (IG) and cybersecurity to ensure the security of patients' private health records.
How to optimize the cost of IoT projects
As IoT development experts, we have devised various methodologies and best practices to minimize your project costs while still delivering the high quality you expect.
It all started with our technical design sprints focused on mitigating potential risks, followed by an agile IoT development process. Compared to the traditional waterfall approach, agile uses shorter development sprints to quickly create a working product, which we then iterate on.
For example, using development kits and 3D printers for rapid prototyping allows us to create hardware models much faster, removing barriers to downstream development of firmware, software, and data science. As a result, our teams can figure out what's feasible, what's not, and how they need to address these issues to mitigate project risk.
As with any technology, sometimes we need to rethink assumptions, update plans, or rethink features. Agile allows us to do this more effectively.
Our team will leverage their experience and expertise, but the final piece of the puzzle depends on you. Open and regular communication is key to project success. This includes sitting down with you during the initial phase to ensure we're 100% on the same page, as well as regular calls and updates. The more invested you are in the process, the more you'll benefit.
