IoT for Asset Tracking: Key Aspects

Better Visibility of Physical Resources

With 12-year experience in IoT development, ScienceSoft helps build and implement robust IoT-powered asset tracking solutions.

IoT for Asset Tracking - ScienceSoft
IoT for Asset Tracking - ScienceSoft

How IoT Can Help with Asset Tracking

IoT for asset tracking helps optimize asset planning, scheduling, allocation, utilization, and maintenance. As a result, businesses can minimize asset loss, misplacement, breakdown, stockout, and excess. IoT-based asset tracking solutions generate up to 40% savings on maintenance and reduce cycle count time up to 90%. Moreover, 79% of supply chain leaders using such solutions record higher revenue growth than their competitors that still use manual asset tracking.

IoT Asset Tracking Market

The global IoT-based asset tracking and monitoring market size is expected to reach $6.7 billion by 2028, rising at a CAGR of 10.7% during the forecast period. The key market drivers include the rise of automation, lower IoT infrastructure costs as well as the growing use of connected devices, IoT-based analytics, and 5G technology.

Tracking the status, location, and movement of raw materials and components, work-in-progress and finished goods for streamlined inventory control and timely replenishment.

Real-time collection and analysis of the status, utilization, performance, condition, and other equipment data for optimized equipment operation and timely equipment maintenance.

Fleet tracking

Monitoring of the vehicle location, condition, driver behavior, fuel consumption, etc. for reduced risks and costs related to vehicle management and telematics.

Facility tracking

Tracking location, condition, space utilization, water and energy consumption, etc. of facilities for their effective planning, maintenance, and optimization.

Tracking the location and usage of medical supplies, tools, equipment, and medications for accurate and safe storage of hospital assets, faster asset search, and streamlined planning of equipment maintenance.

IT asset tracking

Tracking the IT assets like hardware, consumables, and software licenses for full asset transparency, optimized allocation and utilization, timely maintenance and replenishment.

Employee tracking

Monitoring employee location, vitals, and adherence to the rules of workplace safety; detecting potential hazards (pollutants, spills, fires, even overwork) for improved worker safety and health.

Livestock tracking

Collecting real-time data on livestock location, speed, body temperature, etc. for grazing patterns optimization and early detection of heat stress or disease.

Asset data storage

  • Storing asset data (e.g., serial number, type, manufacturer, etc.) in an asset profile.
  • Role-based access to asset data.
  • Asset data search by keywords.
  • Mobile access to asset data.
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Asset tracking

  • Tracking of fixed assets (e.g., tools, equipment), linear assets (e.g., pipelines, power lines), fleet assets (e.g., cars, shipping containers).
  • Asset location and movement tracking by serial number, type, proximity, availability, etc.
  • Tracking asset maintenance history.
  • Tracking asset warranty dates and the history of asset warranty repairs.
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Asset monitoring

  • Asset condition monitoring (e.g., temperature, vibration).
  • Environment monitoring (e.g., temperature, humidity, air pressure) of operating/transported/stored assets.
  • Asset utilization and availability monitoring (e.g., scheduling, booking, check-in/check-out).
  • Notifications about missing assets.
  • Asset performance monitoring.
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Analytics and reporting

  • Analysis of asset utilization, performance, condition, etc.
  • Pre-built and custom reports and dashboards (e.g., asset location history, asset utilization over time).
  • Reports scheduling.
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Development of a Car Electronics Management Application

Development of a Car Electronics Management Application

ScienceSoft delivered a car electronics management solution for a software and hardware provider that specializes in car electronics products. The solution offers an interactive web interface and feature-rich mobile application for Android and iOS with intelligent voice commands, low battery consumption while tracking vehicle state, and real-time GPS tracking with push notifications. It allows vehicle owners to track their vehicles’ location, start and stop the engine, open and close the doors, turn the lights on and off, monitor trip information, and perform other tasks remotely.

Development of RFID-Enabled Smart Farming Application for Livestock Management

Development of RFID-Enabled Smart Farming Application for Livestock Management

ScienceSoft’s team helped a Finnish software company that focuses on the agricultural sector and animal management solutions create an RFID-enabled smart farming application for livestock monitoring and identification. The solution ensures smooth integration between RFID scanners and pidion device (palmtop) for efficient wireless collection of livestock data straight from the field and helps reduce time spent on data gathering and processing.

Get a Robust Asset Tracking Solution with ScienceSoft

With practical knowledge of IoT technology, ScienceSoft’s experts are ready to build a tailored solution to help you reliably track your assets and optimize their use. Reach out to the team to receive a personalized offer.

Tools We Employ for IoT-Based Asset Tracking

To develop state-of-the-art IoT solutions for asset tracking, ScienceSoft utilizes a range of advanced technologies, including:

Cloud databases, warehouses and storage

AWS

Amazon Redshift

We use Amazon Redshift to build cost-effective data warehouses that easily handle complex queries and large amounts of data.

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Amazon DynamoDB

We use Amazon DynamoDB as a NoSQL database service for solutions that require low latency, high scalability and always available data.

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Azure

Azure Cosmos DB

We leverage Azure Cosmos DB to implement a multi-model, globally distributed, elastic NoSQL database on the cloud. Our team used Cosmos DB in a connected car solution for one of the world’s technology leaders.

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Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database is great for handling large volumes of data and varying database traffic: it easily scales up and down without any downtime or disruption to the applications. It also offers automatic backups and point-in-time recoveries to protect databases from accidental corruption or deletion.

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Datastore

We use Google Cloud Datastore to set up a highly scalable and cost-effective solution for storing and managing NoSQL data structures. This database can be easily integrated with other Google Cloud services (BigQuery, Kubernetes, and many more).

IoT data analytics and machine learning

Apache Cassandra

Our Apache Cassandra consultants helped a leading Internet of Vehicles company enhance their big data solution that analyzes IoT data from 600,000 vehicles.

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Amazon DynamoDB

We use Amazon DynamoDB as a NoSQL database service for solutions that require low latency, high scalability and always available data.

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Apache HBase

We use HBase if your database should scale to billions of rows and millions of columns while maintaining constant write and read performance.

Apache Hadoop

By request of a leading market research company, we have built a Hadoop-based big data solution for monitoring and analyzing advertising channels in 10+ countries.

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Apache Kafka

We use Kafka for handling big data streams. In our IoT pet tracking solution, Kafka processes 30,000+ events per second from 1 million devices.

AWS IoT services

IoT platforms

Supported communication protocols

Programming languages

Back end

Microsoft .NET

Practice

19 years

Projects

200+

Workforce

60+

Our .NET developers can build sustainable and high-performing apps up to 2x faster due to outstanding .NET proficiency and high productivity.

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Java

Practice

25 years

Projects

110+

Workforce

40+

ScienceSoft's Java developers build secure, resilient and efficient cloud-native and cloud-only software of any complexity and successfully modernize legacy software solutions.

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Python

Practice

10 years

Projects

50+

Workforce

30

ScienceSoft's Python developers and data scientists excel at building general-purpose Python apps, big data and IoT platforms, AI and ML-based apps, and BI solutions.

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Node.js

Practice

10 years

Workforce

100

ScienceSoft delivers cloud-native, real-time web and mobile apps, web servers, and custom APIs ~1.5–2x faster than other software developers.

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PHP

Practice

16 years

Projects

170

Workforce

55

ScienceSoft's PHP developers helped to build Viber. Their recent projects: an IoT fleet management solution used by 2,000+ corporate clients and an award-winning remote patient monitoring solution.

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C++

Practice

34 years

Workforce

40

ScienceSoft's C++ developers created the desktop version of Viber and an award-winning imaging application for a global leader in image processing.

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Golang

Practice

4 years

ScienceSoft's developers use Go to build robust cloud-native, microservices-based applications that leverage advanced techs — IoT, big data, AI, ML, blockchain.

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Front end

JavaScript

Practice

21 years

Projects

2,200+

Workforce

50+

ScienceSoft uses JavaScript’s versatile ecosystem of frameworks to create dynamic and interactive user experience in web and mobile apps.

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Angular JS

Practice

13 years

Workforce

100+

ScienceSoft leverages code reusability Angular is notable for to create large-scale apps. We chose Angular for a banking app with 3M+ users.

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React JS

Workforce

80+

ScienceSoft achieves 20–50% faster React development and 50–90% fewer front-end performance issues due to smart implementation of reusable components and strict adherence to coding best practices.

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MeteorJS

ScienceSoft uses Meteor for rapid full-stack development of web, mobile and desktop apps.

Vue.js

By using a lightweight Vue framework, ScienceSoft creates high-performant apps with real-time rendering.

Ember.js

When working with Ember.js, ScienceSoft creates reusable components to speed up development and avoid code redundancy.

Next.js

With Next.js, ScienceSoft creates SEO-friendly apps and achieves the fastest performance for apps with decoupled architecture.

Mobile

iOS

Practice

16 years

Projects

150+

Workforce

50+

ScienceSoft’s achieves 20–50% cost reduction for iOS projects due to excellent self-management and Agile skills of the team. The quality is never compromised — our iOS apps are highly rated.

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Android

Practice

14 years

Projects

200+

Workforce

50+

There are award-winning Android apps in ScienceSoft’s portfolio. Among the most prominent projects is the 5-year-long development of Viber, a messaging and VoIP app for 1.8B users.

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Xamarin

Practice

11 years

Projects

85+

Workforce

10+

ScienceSoft cuts the cost of mobile projects twice by building functional and user-friendly cross-platform apps with Xamarin.

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Apache Cordova

ScienceSoft uses Cordova to create cross-platform apps and avoid high project costs that may come with native mobile development.

Progressive Web Apps

ScienceSoft takes the best from native mobile and web apps and creates the ultimate user experience in PWA.

React Native

Practice

8 years

Projects

300+

ScienceSoft reduces up to 50% of project costs and time by creating cross-platform apps that run smoothly on web, Android and iOS.

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Flutter

ScienceSoft will save you from double or even triple expenses associated with platform-specific coding by creating cross-platform apps in Flutter.

Ionic

With Ionic, ScienceSoft creates a single app codebase for web and mobile platforms and thus expands the audience of created apps to billions of users at the best cost.

Data visualization

Power BI

Practice

7 years

ScienceSoft sets up Power BI to process data from any source and report on data findings in a user-friendly format.

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The Challenges of IoT for Asset Tracking

In IoT development since 2011, ScienceSoft knows how to address potential challenges and risks of IoT for asset tracking to make sure your investments pay off.

Challenge #1: Assets’ relevance for tracking

Depending on a company’s size and the number of assets, it may not be worth to track each asset.

Check the solution

Solution: Creating a database of all the company’s assets and deciding on which assets to track. For example, these may be fixed assets worth more than $5,000.

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Challenge #2: Vulnerability to security issues

Connected IoT devices rarely have inbuilt security or consistent update mechanisms, which may result in malware infection, DDoS attacks, damage to the devices, asset data leakage, and more.

Check the solution

Solution: Thorough vulnerability assessment, source code review, penetration testing should be conducted for the IoT-based asset tracking solution before it is launched. Also, an IoT team should make sure that IoT devices are not operating with their default security settings, which poses security risks.

ScienceSoft’s cybersecurity and IoT engineers are ready to design and build highly secure and compliant IoT solutions for asset tracking. Also, we can perform comprehensive security checkups of your entire IT ecosystem, such as risk assessment, compliance assessment, IT security audit, and more.

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Challenge #3: Compatibility issues between different smart devices and IoT solutions

Lack of standardization causes compatibility issues for IoT software and hardware from different vendors.

Check the solution

Solution: ScienceSoft’s IoT experts recommend API integration as the best option to connect to third-party systems. In our IoT projects, we use the open API approach, which allows us to work with any equipment regardless of the vendor. This approach help avoid risks and restrictions related to equipment supply and maintain the system’s flexibility, enabling you to easily scale up an IoT asset tracking solution if needed.

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Challenge #4: Cloud connectivity risks

Using the cloud technology is a common practice for IoT solutions. But if an IoT solution is based only on the logic of a single cloud app, it creates a serious risk: if the cloud app fails, the entire IoT asset monitoring solution will stop working.

Check the solution

Solution: To protect an IoT solution from shutting off, a mesh networking system should be implemented. This system will enable communication between IoT asset tracking devices even if there’s no access to the main app. We at ScienceSoft leverage this decentralized network in IoT software development, as it allows devices to exchange data directly without access to the cloud.

Thus, the devices are will be able to perform their tasks even if cloud is unavailable.

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According to ScienceSoft’s experience, the pricing of IoT asset tracking software starts from $20,000 - 80,000 and can be as high as $150,000 - $250,000, depending on the solution complexity.

These are the main cost factors to take into consideration:

  • Types of assets, their number and the expected growth rate.
  • IoT hardware (e.g., barcodes, tags, readers) and infrastructure (e.g., network, cloud storage) costs.
  • The tech stack and software licenses.
  • The number and complexity of a solution’s functional modules.
  • The number of platforms supported (web, mobile, desktop).
  • The number of different user roles with tailored functionality, the expected number of users.
  • The number and complexity of systems to integrate with, including custom or off-the-shelf systems (e.g., ERP, EAM, EHS, CMMS).
  • The complexity of the required asset analytics reports and dashboards.
  • Solution availability, performance, security, and scalability requirements.
  • The sourcing model (in-house vs. outsourced development).
  • Team composition.
  • Additional IT services like user training and support.

How ScienceSoft’s Expertise Can Help

IoT Asset Tracking Consulting

We start with a thorough analysis of your business needs to create a solution concept and choose the most suitable implementation strategy. Then, we deliver a detailed project plan, architecture, and cost & ROI estimations.

I need this!

IoT Asset Tracking Development

Our team takes charge of the entire project, covering the architecture design, software development/customization, integration with other systems (ERP, EAM, EHS, CMMS, etc.), QA, and user training. We are also ready to offer you continuous IoT support and evolution.

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About ScienceSoft

About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Since 2011, we offer all-around consulting, implementation, and support services for IoT-based asset tracking solutions to help our customers get full view into their assets, optimize their use, and reduce asset maintenance costs. ISO 9001- and ISO 27001-certified, we guarantee high-quality services and complete security of our customers’ data. If you are looking for expert consulting or development services to implement an IoT tracking system, reach out to our team.