Those are among the findings of research from Zyme, a vendor in channel data management. Additionally, increased demand from consumers for a seamless shopping experience is resulting in the development of a variety of customer-facing IoT applications and two thirds (67 percent) of those surveyed said that they plan to use these technologies to capture more insight about customer behaviour across the supply chain in the next 12 months. Vendors are also reviewing how to use IoT to gain improved visibility into every component that impacts the customer experience, from inventory management and stock availability through to lead times for online sales and traceability after point of sale.

Despite this movement however, "The Consumer Technology Digital Intelligence Report" found that there are concerns about the reality of using IoT technologies to collect such intelligence. UK vendors regarded collecting data (63 percent), maintaining security of the data (62 percent), the volume of data generated (60 percent) and how best to interpret the data collected (59 percent) as the key issues that need to be addressed in order for IoT to deliver significant improvements in operational efficiency and improved logistics.

"There is understandably some caution in the market about how best to harness IoT which will undoubtedly counter the determination to adapt and benefit from making such process changes," says Nick Andrews, general manager EMEA & India at Zyme. "Current systems and data collection methodologies are simply either not providing all the necessary information about customer usage, or cannot be completely trusted to be totally accurate."

The report also found that more than two thirds of those interviewed (67 percent) believe that their channel relationships could be improved with better access to information about online sales and 47 percent cited better customer data would give them a better sense of control over their business.

Source: Zyme