From Connected Assets to Connected Outcomes

Industrial organisations are moving beyond connected machines and dashboards. The next wave of value will come from turning asset data into faster decisions, better interventions and stronger customer experiences across the full lifecycle.

For years, the conversation around industrial IoT focused on one central question: can we connect the asset?  That was the right place to start. Connectivity created visibility. It gave manufacturers, dealers, renters, operators, and service teams the ability to see where assets were, how they were performing and when something might be going wrong.

But the industry is entering a new phase.

The strategic question is no longer simply whether an asset is connected. It is whether connected data can be turned into action quickly enough to improve the outcomes that matter: uptime, first-time fix rate, service responsiveness, delivery confidence, customer experience, and lifecycle value.

That shift was front and centre in a recent industry discussion involving participants from across the industrial ecosystem, including OEMs, dealers, rental and asset-intensive operators, as well as technology and advisory firms. What emerged was a clearer picture of where the next battleground sits and why it matters now.

The conversation is moving beyond telemetry

Many connected equipment programmes were built to answer foundational questions:

• Where is the asset?
• Is it being used?
• Has a fault occurred?
• Can someone see it in a portal?

Those capabilities still matter, but they are no longer enough on their own.

The next generation of connected value is about workflow, not just visibility. In other words, the real prize lies in shortening the journey from signal to diagnosis, from diagnosis to decision, and from decision to action.

That is especially important in maintenance and service. IoT Analytics has reported median unplanned downtime costs of around $125,000 per hour across 11 industries, while 95% of predictive maintenance adopters reported positive ROI. The implication is clear: the value of connected data is not theoretical. It becomes tangible when it helps organisations act sooner and act better.

This is also why the market is shifting from predictive to prescriptive. Predicting a fault is useful. Recommending the right action, with the right resource, at the right time, is where performance improvement really happens.

Customer experience now spans the full asset journey

One of the most important shifts in the room was the way customer experience was defined.

In industrial and equipment-heavy sectors, customer experience is often still framed too narrowly, usually as a function of uptime or service recovery once a machine is already in operation. That remains important, but it is only part of the picture.

In reality, customer experience now stretches across the full asset journey:

• Search and selection
• Booking and reservation
• Tracking and receipt
• Operation and monitoring
• Service and support
• Return and renewal

That matters because friction in this market doesn’t start only when something breaks. It can start when a customer struggles to find the right asset, lacks confidence in delivery timing, can’t see where equipment is on its journey to them, receives poor status visibility during service, or faces a difficult off-hire or renewal process.

This broader definition is increasingly supported by market evidence. Deloitte found that 93% of industrial manufacturing and construction companies surveyed were already experimenting with or implementing at least one digital customer experience use case, with an average of four use cases already in play. It also found that tools providing customers with real-time updates on parts, products, installation status or material availability were among the most prevalent use cases.

In other words, digital customer experience in industrial markets is not just about front-end channels. It is increasingly about visibility, confidence, transparency and responsiveness across the lifecycle.

The real value is created across the ecosystem

Another important theme was that connected value is rarely created by a single party acting alone.

The industrial asset journey runs across multiple participants:

• OEMs provide machine intelligence, diagnostics, product insight, and increasingly remote capabilities
• Dealers and service partners provide diagnosis, field response, repair execution, and parts coordination
• Rental businesses manage availability, logistics, utilisation, turnaround, and customer communications
• Operators care about continuity, productivity, reliability, and ease of support

Each sees the asset through a different lens. Each is measured in different ways. And each only captures full value when the hand-offs between them work properly.

That is why connected strategies that focus too narrowly on the asset itself often underdeliver. Data may be available, but if it is not translated into coordinated action across the ecosystem, the customer does not feel the benefit and the economics do not improve as much as they should.

Leading players are already showing what more joined-up models can look like. Caterpillar reported record services revenues of $24 billion in 2024 and said it is working with dealers while leveraging more than 1.5 million connected reporting assets and digital tools to help customers improve uptime and fleet management.

That is significant because it reinforces a broader point: connected data becomes more powerful when it supports a service, dealer, and aftermarket model, not just an equipment monitoring model.

Why this matters now

There are at least five forces pushing this agenda forward.

1. AI is becoming operational. McKinsey reports that 92% of executives expect to increase AI investment over the next three years, yet only a very small proportion describe their deployment as mature. That means the field is moving quickly, but there is still real opportunity for industrial organisations to shape where value is created.

2. Real-time data is becoming mission critical in service and operations. The 2025 Field Service Emerging Technologies Report found that 89% of field service organisations planned to increase technology budgets, and 67% said real-time access to service data and customer information has the biggest impact on operations.

3. Connectivity and edge architectures are maturing. The technical ability to connect and process data is improving. The harder challenge is now organisational: how to embed those signals into real decisions and field workflows.

4. Cyber and trust are moving to the core. As more operational environments become connected and data-rich, trust, resilience, and governance become essential. Fortinet reports that 52% of organisations now place OT security under the CISO, up sharply from 2022.

5. Customer expectations are changing. In adjacent sectors, digital leaders are already conditioning customers to expect more transparency and control across the journey. United Rentals, for example, said that in Q1 2024 more than 70% of revenue came from customers using one or more digital tools across the rental journey, including renting equipment, checking delivery status, placing service calls, off-renting, and payments.

What leading organisations should focus on next

For industrial leaders, the next step is not simply to add more dashboards or more pilots.

It is to focus on a few sharper questions:

• Where does friction still exist across the asset lifecycle?
• Which maintenance decisions could be made earlier or better with stronger data and workflow integration?
• Where do customers need more confidence, visibility, or transparency?
• Which ecosystem hand-offs cause the greatest delays or cost?
• Which KPI would prove value fastest if improved?

Those questions help move the discussion away from generic technology ambition and towards practical operating choices.

From connected assets to connected outcomes

The core idea is simple.

Connected assets create potential. Connected outcomes require orchestration.

The next wave of value in industrial operations will not be won by those who collect the most data. It will be won by those who use data to remove friction across the asset journey, improve decisions across the ecosystem, and create better experiences for customers, service teams, and operators alike.

That is the opportunity now in front of industrial organisations.

Not just to connect machines.

But to connect decisions, workflows, and outcomes.

Where Salesforce Fits

For many industrial organisations, the challenge is not a lack of systems. It is a lack of connection between them.

Asset data may sit in telematics platforms, operational records in ERP or service systems, customer interactions in CRM, and planning or workflow activity somewhere else entirely. The result is often a fragmented operating picture, where insight exists but action is still slow, manual or inconsistent.

This is where Salesforce can play a distinctive role.

Rather than replacing the core operational systems already in place, Salesforce helps connect the layers that turn data into action:

• System of context to bring together operational, customer and service data
• System of engagement to create better interactions across customers, employees and partners
• System of work to orchestrate workflows across service, support and commercial teams
• System of agency to apply AI and agents to guide, automate and accelerate decisions

In practical terms, that means helping industrial organisations move more effectively from signal to action. A machine alert can become a service case. A service case can trigger diagnosis, coordination and communication. A delay can become a proactive customer update. A pattern across assets can become a recommendation, intervention or next-best action.

That is especially relevant in asset-intensive environments, where value is often won or lost in the hand-offs between OEMs, dealers, renters, operators and support teams.

The opportunity is to help the ecosystem act on data faster, with more context and less friction.