Adoption of machine-to-machine solutions is growing and interest in the technology is coming right from the top: the CEO.
M2M projects are no longer the sole remit of a company’s IT department, as evidenced by new research published by Vodafone on Tuesday. And the fact that companies are reporting relatively fast returns on investment from connected devices might well have something to with that.
"Companies can now safely invest in machine-to-machine," declared Erik Brenneis, director of machine-to-machine at Vodafone, presenting the results of the mobile operator’s latest M2M market survey at an event in London on Tuesday.
M2M "delivers a significant return on investment," Brenneis said. 83% of those surveyed whose companies have already adopted M2M "say they have gained a competitive advantage" from it, he said.
Improvements in processes and productivity were cited most often as a form of ROI, but respondents also identified benefits in areas including customer service, speed of decision-making and costs.
"It’s also producing return on investment faster," said Phil Skipper, Vodafone’s head of M2M business development. The study showed that 54% of M2M adopters reported ROI within 12 months
.
Vodafone surveyed 659 people in seven industries across 16 countries to produce its third annual M2M Barometer. Respondents included CEOs, CIOs, and technical, sales and IT staff, while interviews were split roughly equally betwee n the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa.
76% have heard of M2M and 90% of those said it is relevant to their organisation today, up from 86% this time last year. 27% have an M2M project in place, up from 22% last year, while a further 37% have projects ready to go live in the next two years.
A top-down approach
One of the telco’s key findings was that CEOs are more aware of and involved in M2M functions than they had been in previous years.
"For the first time ever," more CEOs classified M2M as "more of an innovation project," than as a classic IT project, Brenneis said (see chart above). "That’s a big trend."
Indeed, M2M is no longer a siloed IT project 
within an organisation, Skipper said. "It’s now impacting multiple parts of the business."
Vodafone’s research shows that 81% of the companies that were using M2M in last year’s report said they have increased their use of it in the past 12 months (chart 2).
"He who pays for M2M is also changing," Skipper added (chart 3).
CIOs, of course, still view M2M as being firmly in the IT domain. As result, "we can expect some pulling within our customers," Brenneis predicted, noting that it is already "more difficult for us as a sales organisation to figure out who is the decision-maker" within a company.
CIOs and IT heads "are always involved" in M2M deals, and in 41% of cases "the CEO is involved in that directly," Brenneis said.
The presence of the CEO has become particularly noticeable in the automotive space. "They are very awar e of this," he said, compared with two to three years ago when "we hardly knew the CEOs," he said.
"You really need to map out the whole customer account, not only the IT department," Brenneis explained.
"It means more work for us," but this shift is potentially advantageous to a company the size of Vodafone, he said. "In a more complex environment it tends to get harder for smaller companies." 
