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Many organizations prove the value of the Internet of Things through pilot programs, only to hit unexpected obstacles when they try to scale those efforts across the business. While technical challenges often get the most attention, wider adoption can also be slowed by the people, processes and priorities that shape how connected systems are used every day.
Scaling IoT isn’t just a matter of adding more devices or expanding infrastructure; it also requires a clear understanding of how the technology will fit into real-world operations. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share the nontechnical factors organizations often underestimate when moving IoT beyond the pilot stage and why those factors can play such a big role in long-term success.
Process Redesign Readiness
There must be a willingness to redesign business processes after IoT-enabled insights are clearly understood. Getting more data from IoT devices can challenge long-held assumptions about business operations, which can result in uncomfortable decisions being presented. Organizations need to anticipate the potential for major shifts, especially with the potential of AI making data insights more readily obtainable. – Kim Bozzella, Protiviti
Stakeholder Trust
Organizations are slow to scale IoT because it requires a significant investment of time, money and reputation to scale a distributed system that’s hard to monitor and manage onsite. Earning the trust of technical and business staff is vital to overcome this understandable reaction—and that’s best achieved by providing ample proof that IoT platforms consistently deliver as promised. – Steve Smith, National Grid Partners
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Action Governance
The nontechnical factor most often underestimated is the governance of action. An IoT pilot can prove a signal exists, but scale requires an operating compact that names who interprets it, who acts, who funds upkeep and who owns exceptions. Without that compact, telemetry proliferates faster than accountability, and the program becomes another dashboard rather than an operational discipline. – Rishi Katdare, Amazon Web Services
Adoption-Aligned Incentives
Organizations often underestimate incentive design. A pilot survives on curiosity and executive attention; scale depends on what managers are rewarded for every quarter. If uptime, throughput or cost targets conflict with IoT-driven actions, people choose incentives over insights. Sustainable adoption happens when performance metrics evolve alongside connected operations, not months later! – Jagadish Gokavarapu, Wissen Infotech
Operational Ownership
Organizations often underestimate operational ownership after deployment. Many IoT pilots succeed technically but fail at scale because no team is clearly responsible for device maintenance, data quality, incident response and lifecycle management. Without defined operational accountability, deployments become difficult to sustain, secure and integrate into everyday business processes. – Amirtha Saminathan, Lowe’s
Field Operations Buy-In
Pilots succeed because the executive sponsor wants them to. Production scale needs field technicians and operators who will use the system day-to-day, in conditions that don’t match the pilot. Without their input on UI, alert thresholds and exception handling, scaled IoT deployments get quietly turned off. Build their role into the design phase, not the rollout phase. – Nikhil Jathar, AvanSaber Technologies
Frontline User Trust
One nontechnical factor teams underestimate is operator trust. As IoT scales across physical environments, frontline teams must believe alerts are accurate, workflows are practical and the system will stay reliable. If it creates false urgency or extra work, users revert to manual processes and the pilot never becomes operational at scale. – Freddy Kuo, Luminys Systems Corporation
Cross-Department Collaboration
Many times, there is a silo not between technologies but between departments. As investments in machines and production grow higher and riskier, the managers on the shop floor are thinking they know engineering, IT and technology better than software engineers or IT admins. Often, I saw arrogance kill a huge improvement through IoT applications. Another issue is differences in language and wording, which leads to conflicts. – Thomas Berndorfer, Connecting Software
Organizational Alignment
One commonly underestimated factor is organizational alignment. Even when the pilot works technically, scaling IoT requires operations, IT, security, finance and business teams to stay aligned on ownership, priorities and outcomes. Without that alignment, deployments stall, decision-making slows and the initiative struggles to move from experimentation to enterprise value. – Kiran Palla, CogniwareAI
Total Lifecycle Costs
Don’t overlook procurement and lifecycle economics: Pilots use a handful of devices, but scale exposes the real costs—replacement cycles, connectivity fees, certificate management, end-of-life disposal and vendor lock-in. Without procurement, finance and sustainability teams aligned on total cost of ownership, IoT programs stall when the second-year invoice arrives and the math stops working. – Nitin Agarwal, Luminace
Change Management
One of the most underestimated factors in scaling IoT is organizational change management. Many pilots succeed technically but fail at enterprise scale because teams, processes and decision structures are not aligned to adopt data-driven operations. IoT transformation is ultimately about changing behaviors, accountability and business workflows, not just connecting devices. – Pabitra Saikia, Truist Bank
Data-Driven Decision Training
Most IoT pilots succeed because one champion drives them. Scaling fails when organizations realize they never built the human systems to act on the data. Sensors work; behavior change doesn’t happen automatically. If frontline workers aren’t trained to make decisions from real-time data and aren’t measured on it, the infrastructure becomes an expensive decoration. – Manas Chaudhari, Meta
Exception Management
Organizations underestimate service design around exceptions. Pilots handle edge cases through heroic effort. At scale, sensors fail, alerts conflict and workflows break normal routines. If teams do not define how exceptions are triaged, escalated and resolved, IoT becomes operational noise instead of operational intelligence. – Pawan Anand, Persistent Systems
Value Realization
Most successful IoT programs that succeed technically fail in real life due to ”value realization” issues. People don’t adopt them due to a lack of demonstrated value and/or culture and change management-related challenges. The success rate is much better if “process workflow” design workshops are conducted before launching the technology program. – Jo Debecker, Akkodis
Operational Culture
The most underestimated nontechnical factor is operational culture. Pilots work in controlled settings, but scaling requires frontline teams that trust the data and adjust routines accordingly. Without training, clear ownership and aligned incentives, sensors generate noise instead of decisions. Technology scales fast, but human behavior doesn’t—and that’s where most IoT efforts fail. – Faustino Júnior, First.Doctor
Frontline Data Literacy
The smartest IoT solution means nothing if your people on the ground don’t understand the value of the data and don’t believe in it. Education of frontline staff is the missing dataset in most IoT rollouts. When workers lack IoT and/or AI literacy, they default to gut instinct over real-time intelligence, creating a shadow system that silently undermines every connected device on the floor. – Vinod Bijlani, HPE
Skills Readiness
The factor most leaders underestimate is the skills gap. IDC’s November 2025 InfoBrief found skills-related challenges are now the No. 1 obstacle to industrial AIoT adoption—up from fifth place in 2019. The hardware works, but the people who can run it don’t exist yet. OT and IT teams speak different languages, and scale stalls in the translation. Invest in fluency before more sensors. – Hastimal Jangid, Coozmoo Digital Solutions, Inc.
Frontline Expertise
Pilot programs often don’t capture the hidden knowledge held by humans in the process, and user adoption drops due to erroneous results as scaling begins. The importance of involving superusers in pilot programs cannot be emphasized enough. – Anisha Manvatkar, NVIDIA
Change Fatigue
They underestimate organizational change fatigue—the weariness teams feel from the constant introduction of new processes, tools and workflows that IoT scaling demands. This matters because even the best IoT technology fails if employees resist adoption. Without addressing the human side through clear communication, training and incentives, scaling stalls and ROI never materializes. – Anil Jaiswal, U.S. Bank
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