IoT Bridging the Gap for Intelligent Small and Medium-Sized Buildings

Large building owners have been investing in intelligent building technologies and leveraging these data-driven solutions to reduce costs, improve operational and energy efficiencies, and achieve broader corporate objectives like sustainability. Small and medium building (SMB) owners, on the other hand, often struggle to maintain profits and sustain slim margins with more traditional approaches. Most of these smaller buildings lack the technology to generate the kind of data that ties energy consumption to operational and bottom-line performance. As a result, there is a lost opportunity for these business owners. The Internet of Things (IoT) concept, however, is changing the conversation around building management and delivering impressive results. There are three ways that IoT is opening new doors for SMB energy efficiency and business improvement.

#1: Secure, Scalable, and Easy to Install

IoT is a concept that spans nearly every area of the economy. It is about the connectivity of devices, data, and personalization of technology. IoT is an influential concept when considering energy management and operational efficiency in smaller facilities because it is a pathway to cost-effective technology deployment. An IoT platform for building energy management systems (BEMSs) entails sensors, gateways, and wireless communications to deliver better data to the analytics engine that in turn presents better insights and actions to customers. The significant reductions in cost from this technology approach—as compared to traditional controls and automation—make the benefits of developing intelligent buildings attainable for smaller facilities.

IoT-enabled intelligent building systems are secure, scalable, and interoperable. They assist with open communications and standards within the building space, assisting with reduced costs and improved integration possibilities. Security is becoming a high-profile aspect of intelligent building investment decisions. Solutions providers are installing network-secure IoT platforms that scale to support the same opportunities for improved efficiency and reduced costs in small and medium-sized buildings that are available in large buildings. IoT can deliver essential data, down to the asset level, to support better directives via the BEMS.

The bottom line is that IoT solutions deliver data-driven insights to SMB decision makers without significant business disruption for installation—and at a cost that is justifiable.

#2: Unifying Tool for Multiple Challenges

Energy management remains an important use case for BEMSs because the performance improvements of building systems deliver a transparent ROI through utility bill reductions.

• Data aggregation: The promise of the intelligent building—and IoT for that matter—is the ability to have a centralized view of building operations to direct changes and make investments that drive down costs and improve experience. One of the big challenges for new customers is that their business has operated with management silos. Spreadsheets, monthly bills, and rules of thumb have often dominated the approach to energy or facilities management because the work at hand is the business happening inside the walls, not facilities optimization. IoT offers customers a new unified platform to bring data together across their silos to make better informed decisions that create efficiencies and cost savings—and even enhance sales.
• Data presentment: Once the data is centralized, another benefit of an IoT-enabled intelligent building is the visual communications of sometimes complicated data sets. Dashboards, mobile applications, and automated alerts can give customers a quick and concise view of the performance of their facility.

#3: Clear Benefits beyond Just Energy Efficiency

The pain points that drive customers to invest in IoT solutions can vary in each situation, but there are some common themes Guidehouse Insights has identified. It is clear the vendors that are making traction with SMB customers are pitching benefits beyond just energy efficiency.

• Retail: The centralized data of an IoT solution can be translated into information that is critical for shop owners. Occupancy and environmental data can provide insight into the customer experience: How long do shoppers stay, what route do they travel, and how long do they wait for help? These are clearly non-energy benefits, but fundamental to retail customers’ bottom lines. While the IoT solution may help optimize the environmental conditions for energy efficiency, the cost savings on energy bills are only amplified by longer or more streamlined customer experience.
• Small and medium-sized offices: Energy efficiency is foundational to calculating intelligent building ROI. Fewer kilowatt-hours used mean fewer dollars on that monthly utility bill. There is an important soft ROI for IoT-enabled solutions for office spaces, albeit a squishy metric of productivity. There are many use cases for intelligent lighting controls, HVAC optimization, and indoor air quality that tell the story of worker productivity. It is the simple narrative that happy employees are more productive. IoT solutions provide the data-driven insight to create the necessary environments to maximize worker satisfaction.

Join Casey Talon, principal research analyst at Guidehouse Insights, Sunita Shenoy, director of Products at Intel, Doug Harp, COO at CANDI Controls, and Vladi Shunturov, founder and president of Lucid, on October 27 for a roundtable discussion. We'll dive further into these ideas on how IoT can bridge the gap for intelligent buildings in SMBs. Register now.