Why? CSPs can be too tech-focused, lacking long-term strategic intent, and sometimes overestimate their actual ability to execute. They often place too much emphasis on targeting enterprises, too, which means they miss out on valuable opportunities with smaller but still-sizeable organizations. And when it comes to value chain position, many CSP leaders assume they should be higher up the IoT stack, which leads to miscalculating the foundational capabilities required to deliver related services. They also often overestimate their own strengths in comparison to more well-equipped IT firms.

When it comes to “how to win,” CSPs are encountering difficulties with go-to-market and ecosystem strategies. They’re finding it difficult to develop adequate in-house capabilities and establish solid partnerships. Further, CSPs’ various operating units work as silos, which complicates the operating model. For example, if a CSP has separate enterprise and network departments—and most do—these departments may find it difficult to work in close concert to deliver value, resulting in disjointed strategy and inefficient operations.

But don’t worry; these challenges pale in comparison to the potential now available to CSPs.

The Right Data Plays

To provide actionable insights, an organization needs access to data, whether it collect this data on its own or gets it from another source. The data broker has risen in importance and will continue upwards as the IoT market matures and more of it is shared across industries. Given their solid track records for handling sensitive data—and the huge volume of quality, exclusive data that they steward—CSPs are in prime position to compete for a great segment of this market. There are four primary data monetization plays that they should consider.

CSPs can leverage IoT use case data, and to do so should first identify what’s most valuable to organizations. Primary cases, such as predictive maintenance based on sensor data generated from asset performance, are a good start.

Additionally, CSPs can aggregate primary use case data into a data lake, which they can also complement with external sources. This information can be stored, validated, integrated and anonymized, making it desirable and ready for sharing. 

The remaining two plays include brokering in a data marketplace, or even establishing their own means of connecting data providers with users. This further step can create a “single stop” for buyers to find the diverse data sets they need. Finally, CSPs can build applications using data from both the lake and third parties to create additional revenue streams. 

There are multiple viable strategies and choosing the right one requires executives to be candid about how aggressive they want to be in data-driven markets. Yet, with the growing IoT data sets they possess, make no mistake: CSPs can disrupt the market as high-value data players.

Making Moves in Transport and Logistics

The final area of focus deals with transport and logistics. This industry will greatly benefit from 5G and IoT—and CSPs are built to take these organizations exactly where they want to go.

The transport and logistics sector includes five key customer processes: traffic management; vehicle, driver and fleet management; hub management; and supply chain management. Each has distinct pain points, with security and data-sharing topping the lists.