By 2020, research shows that the number of connected industrial devices will grow 285 percent from 2015. If you’re like some industrial leaders who feel the industrial internet of things (IIoT) is more hype than real, you’re taking a wait-and-see approach. But if you’re like many of the leaders we speak to, you recognize it’s not if you need to digitally transform your business, but when—and even more fundamentally, how.

Knowing how to get started and the right direction to take requires defining the right outcomes. This is especially true when industrial organizations look to data and predictive analytics at a component level to provide better insights. But data in and of itself doesn’t impact an outcome on its own. Instead, it’s important to focus first on outcomes, and use data to help deliver those outcomes.

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