Internet-of-Things (IoT) is expected to transform every industry by enabling seamless and uninterrupted machine-to-machine communication. The unprecedented growth of connected devices provides an untapped opportunity for service providers to develop new business models, revenue streams and an enhanced customer experience.
Today, enterprises driving digital transformation strategies take an in-depth view of adapting to emerging and ubiquitous trends such as AI, wearables, and smart connected devices powered by the IoT, while aiming to deliver innovative services. For end users, IoT provides an ambitious and unrestrained platform that maximizes productivity, insights, and quality of life. The opportunity to deliver value to end users by leveraging IoT is real, and service providers are crafting solutions to improve decision making and transform existing customer engagement models. However, as end users become cautious of protecting data emanating from devices, service providers are treading carefully and are beginning to get a sense of the challenges ahead.
Furthermore, regulators are faced with a new set of realities concerning data security and compliance policies with the emergence of IoT-driven UAVs, autonomous vehicles and AI. Implementing laws is time-consuming and that is why service providers take on the added responsibility to reduce potential risks, address media and consumer concerns, and enhance security.
Ascendum Solutions makes IoT vision a reality and collaborates with customers at different stages to rapidly develop new IoT applications and services.
Moving Beyond the Idea: Early Success
Since 2014, Ascendum Solutions has developed IoT applications to connect things, collect data and derive insights that allowed their clients to create personalized offers and services, innovative business models and processes and bigger business opportunities. Emphasizing on the value of IoT, Kris Nair, CEO, said “Our clients wanted to leverage IoT to develop applications and services that created new value streams for end users and helped respond to user needs in real-time. Secure and seamless platforms based on Ascendum’s solution integration capabilities allowed enterprises to quickly capture more data about processes and products and improve market agility.”
Ascendum’s earliest IoT innovation was to include digital capabilities in traditional “dumb” vending machines and transforming them into “Smart” ones. Adequate user customization, smart payments, and constant monitoring of inventory and consumption patterns allowed them to deliver a network of connected devices. This enabled their clients to access information generated by these vending machines, remotely and in real-time, and ultimately generate profitable revenues. This solution continues to add tremendous value to their partners by identifying deployments, conducting test marketing, and tracking trends/consumption preferences to adjust selections accordingly. Brands get the opportunity to interact with real-time dashboards and visualization tools to retrieve timely sales and maintenance information across deployed machines and deep-dive into individual point-of-sale (POS).
Ascendum’s next big IoT innovation was around deploying and enforcing Smart Parking Solutions for an entire city administration. In partnership with a high-growth, start-up, they created an IoT platform and rolled out a successful pilot in one of most traffic-congested cities in North America. This solution also scaled to empower cities on-demand to manage parking assets and provide a hassle-free parking experience for drivers, merchants and solution providers. Describing their technology breakthroughs, Uday Kumar, Vice President of Sales, said “The use of low-cost sensors and real-time data analytics allowed users to monitor available and unavailable parking spots in airports, universities, shopping centers, city garages and even on-street parking. While parking guidance to drivers was offered through a mobile app, a real-time embeddable map displayed parking availability to businesses for a specific location or facility.” Ascendum’s web-based analytics platform helped the city administration in policy planning by enforcing/addressing parking violations and historical parking occupancy reports. This solution continues to provide automated parking support to cities, drivers and businesses with improved real-time insights and enforcement tools, integrated payments, POS support and new revenue streams for various stakeholders.
Their next big innovation focused on the retail industry, which remains the most disrupted sector by IoT applications. In 2014, their partner wanted to harness the power of IoT’s uninterrupted data to boost its bottom line. It aimed to create smarter supply chains and tailored marketing programs that catered to specific consumer needs and preferences. Ascendum made this vision a reality. Their group of IoT applications allowed retailers to offer personalized customer experiences, receive data-driven insights, and leverage a connected, unified retail experience. Speaking about Ascendum’s out-of-the-box innovation, Kris said, “With a view to demonstrate the capabilities of its IoT innovations, we transformed a shopping mall to make hyperlocal content accessible to shoppers with beacon-driven technology. We converted store surfaces/display devices to offer innovative, immersive retail experience by displaying personalized offers/merchandizing concepts.” Today, these retail IoT solutions have been extended to better manage coupons, deals and loyalty programs, facilitate real-time alerts, offer support to just-in-time deliveries/kerb-side pickups and enhance customer satisfaction.
Leveraging IoT to Simplify Business Processes
Over the years, Ascendum’s IoT applications have helped enterprises get an in-depth view of the business. By being able to track the supply chain end-to-end, their clients have reduced the costs of doing business in multiple locations. Furthermore, their solutions allow partners to access information from autonomous endpoints, which enables them to make on-the-fly decisions on pricing, logistics, sales, and support deployment.
While Ascendum’s innovation labs continuously research and identify solutions for various verticals, (healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and education), they have recently focused their efforts on ensuring that clients avoid repetitive mistakes that are extremely disruptive in nature. Often times, their partners develop a feature or functionality that is difficult to monetize or they thoroughly underestimate their customer’s security and privacy concerns. On the other hand, some partners overestimate their in-house team’s capabilities and infrastructure. Reiterating their unique approach Joe Dooley, Vice President – Business Development, said “We have worked with organizations that either take an ‘IoT changes everything’ approach, or force existing technology infrastructure to work with connected devices. However it’s important to realize that the IoT ecosystem continues to be immature and unpredictable.” And that is why, Ascendum supports and helps clients:
- Address security and privacy issues: Organizations are concerned about protecting data emanating from devices and are beginning to understand the challenges.
- Process data at the local/cloud/data center-level: Enterprises are still unsure of where to store and process data generated by devices. While some organizations want to process the data locally, others prefer to store and analyze data in a private/hybrid cloud, or move it within their data center. This uncertainty regarding data retrieval and storage in the current infrastructure leads to questions regarding Big Data.
With an aim to provide a competitive edge, foster innovation and capitalize on opportunities arising from IoT, Ascendum helps partners deliver connectivity, security, and an optimal customer experience.
Future Forward
Ascendum is currently introducing IoT solutions for the manufacturing and retail sector. Their solutions connect IoT hardware with embedded software, and use a product cloud to manage and process data while integrating with security tools and business systems. This futuristic solution connects the dots between various business units and activities in an organization, works across silos of data, and creates real-time dashboards to drive competitive edge. Additionally, their integrated solutions allow factories to unlock operational efficiencies and optimize production lines, and ultimately deliver a seamless connected experience.
What’s more, Ascendum’s IoT solutions further enhance their client’s ability to offer digital transformation services in a seamless and consistent manner.
Talking about the future of IoT and their role in delivering it to the world, Kris says, “The IoT sector is poised for autonomy and we look forward to an immediate future where smart, connected devices assume and assert autonomy in product operations, self-coordinate with other devices, and self-diagnose to enable continuous product enhancement and services.”
About Ascendum Solutions
Ascendum Solutions provides innovative technology solutions, services, and staff augmentation support to clients by leveraging industry expertise, global scale and technology excellence.
Ascendum’s success is based on its business and technology expertise, strategic partnerships, and deep industry experience, which allow companies to innovate and succeed in any industry. Its global delivery capabilities are driven by state-of-the-art delivery centers across the world and supported by modernized business processes.
Headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, Ascendum has sales and support offices in Hamilton & Blue Ash, OH and New York, NY with offshore delivery centers located in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, India. Ascendum is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vora Ventures Group, a Cincinnati-based private equity group that specializes in building innovative IT companies worldwide.
Ascendum has advanced technology and industry expertise to get clients’ ideas to market faster with product engineering services. We provide a wide range of business solutions covering Software Development, Software Maintenance and Software Re-engineering/Migration Services.
Their end-to-end product engineering services include, but are not limited to: Software Development (Desktop/Web/Mobile) Business/Web Apps & SaaS, UI/UX Design, Agile/Waterfall Methodology, Requirement Analysis, Solution Design & Architecture, Cloud & Virtualization, Independent Testing & Test Automation, Devops & Automation, and Sustenance Engineering, Continous Delivery & Application Support.
Business Solutions On-Demand
In addition to Product Engineering Services, Ascendum provides the following Business Solutions.
Intelligent Software Products: The team develops customized software to help enterprises overcome operational and tactical issues and accelerate business growth.
Product Incubation Centers: Based on a build-operate-transfer model, they offer dedicated infrastructure (nearshore & offshore) and technical expertise while catering to product development needs – from conceptualization to execution.
Rapid Prototyping & Innovation Labs: Their rapid development provides clients with a small and lean prototype and continuously aligns with business requirements. This is a proven approach to kick start new strategic initiatives.
SaaS Product Initiatives: They follow a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach to developing client-centric products, right from micro-services, to role-based web applications and mobile end-points.
Unique Value Proposition to minimize risk, optimize processes, and accelerate scale.
Innovation: Based on an innovation-first principle, they leverage their IP portfolio and existing partner ecosystem to achieve faster time-to-market and cost reduction;
Process Excellence – Their Best Practices approach ensures implementation of proven methodologies at all times
Expertise – Their skilled resources, expertise and experience develop next-generation, future-ready solutions.
Website :: Ascendum
