Every year more and more products are entering the IoT space, and billion of products are connected to the Internet.

If you are considering implementing IoT within your organization, or developing a new connected product, read on to ensure you are not making these five common mistakes:

1. Are you taking advantage of economies of scale?

Instead of looking at the current value, try looking long-term. Mistakes are commonly made by implementing a product that can make an initial profit but doesn’t allow any scalability. This can be caused by a number of factors, including:

 2. Are you ignoring the cost factors involved in implementation?

Of course, you’re looking at the cost of the product itself. Maybe even consider customizing it for your organization. But if you are one of the 54% of companies that are implementing IoT because of cost factors, are you paying attention to the cost vs. benefit of implementation? Opportunity cost of the training time it will take your team to learn and adjust to a new model is just one of the many cost factors associated with IoT implementation. This doesn’t mean that the value can’t be there. However, it’s a mistake to ignore the business value, before proceeding with the implementation. Mistakes are usually made when the focus is on the product itself, (or the specific abilities of the product), not the benefits and value the product brings.

3. Are you still solving the right problem?

We all know how quickly things change in every industry, and that is multiplied infinitely within IoT. Are you planning for regular assessments?

By including frequent checkpoints along the way, you can avoid reaching the end of your development to realize that the problem you were solving no longer exists.

Make sure that you’re giving yourself flexibility and have enough organizational self-awareness, so you can course-correct if necessary.

4. Is your timeline realistic?

Implementers frequently make the mistake of planning a timeline based on best case scenarios. While this might speed up the approval process, an unrealistic timeline means that the IoT implementation will be unavoidably more expensive.

Besides that, if you are promising an unrealistic timeline, you’re adding unpredictability in a position where predictability is key.

5. Are you ready to handle possible failures?

By ignoring the possibility for failure, you are setting yourself up for one of two things:

• Not allowing space for better products.
• Complete failure of the project, not just the product, because there was no ability to adjust as needed.

So, tell us: Have you considered these questions or are you on the brink of making one of the most common five mistakes when implementing IoT?