Expersight Intelligence
In the wake of the ongoing pandemic, contactless communications are more than just a luxury. They are an imperative tool to assure human distancing. In the pursuit of digitization, almost all businesses are now rushing for rapid product development in 2021 for their respective use cases. The US-based B2B IoT marketplace “Ioterra” had foreseen the trends 2 years ago. With a staunch belief in the future of digital transformation using IoT technologies, the world’s only marketplace for total IoT solutions and services has trekked a long way.
Ioterra has created a unified platform for enterprises to source all categories of IoT talent – service providers, solution providers, potential employees, contractors and consultants. The community-driven marketplace allows IoT professionals to connect, discuss and associate for projects. The platform has an extensive pool of profiles to choose from such as Industrial design & prototyping, hardware and embedded systems development, security & compliance, procurement, data analytics and installation. Not to miss, the platform community has manufacturers with vast experience in the mass production of IoT products..
“IoT is new and complicated. Sourcing high-quality IoT talent has been a major challenge for all enterprises. Be it hiring an IoT vendor or an IoT expert as an employee, the high demand after Covid has increased the hiring costs as well as the time to onboard. Ioterra is a unified talent marketplace crafted to fast-track sourcing of niche talent such as IoT, AI, Blockchain etc. so that the companies can execute their projects on time and at budget. For the IoT professionals, it is the shortest possible channel to find high-quality work opportunities. “says Ioterra CSO, Abhinav Dubey.
The Ioterra Process
Over the years, the platform has onboarded enterprises and hundreds of top-tier vendors in the ecosystem. The process is fairly simple. After answering a few high-level questions about the project type and requirements via their request for a proposal tool, the business receives notifications from applicants (product development companies and consultants).
The business shares an RFQ against all the applications handpicks the most appropriate partner and starts the project. In the best-case scenario, it takes up to 1 week for the entire process and that’s the beauty of the platform which enables businesses to save both time and cost. 
As a complicated product development area constituting of numerous stakeholders, IoT projects often face unforeseen delays due to several reasons. Among many others, resource crunch has been a key factor for slower mainstream adoption of the technology. Despite upskilling efforts, 76% of organizations confirmed lack of skilled professionals in the business is hampering their product launch.
In all honesty, it is too early for enterprises to build an in-house team. Consequentially, associating with outsourcing partners is the best possible channel to fill the gaps. At Ioterra, businesses strike a peer-to-peer connection with like-minded professionals to fill their vacancies.
But Ioterra is not just a project hunting platform. Here, the teams help either side to connect with the right partner. With a team of in-house IoT consultants, the platform provides on-demand support in strategizing, requirement scoping and cost estimation.
The built-in IoT project cost estimator evaluates the scale of 3 core areas – mechanical, firmware and electronics development. Through a short MCQ exercise, businesses can get closer to the project development estimate and decide wisely. Additionally, the cost estimator can run various permutations of the business concept and production cost analysis for each. For example, if a business wants to decode the costing of sensors to the design or enhancements such as waterproofing etc., the cost estimator provides a tentative breakdown.
Ioterra works because it is addressing an important unresolved bottleneck of the industry – sourcing of skilled IoT resources on time and at budget. Despite numerous opportunities, most services didn’t risk the complexity of hardware consulting (PCB designing, components procurement, prototyping etc.). This is a critical differentiator because IoT development is 50% hardware; those who get this right have already outperformed most peers in the business. The digital marketplace is leading North American from the front across sectors such as Healthcare, Industrial IoT (IIoT), Automobile and others.
Going forward, Ioterra aims to extend services to other emerging technologies. It is fair to say that IoT is one of the most challenging domains and the expertise utilized here could be valuably replicated to other areas.
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