Articles from SmartSense by Digi

Organizational resilience (OR) is a proactive strategy that enables a business enterprise to overcome a myriad of potential market and global adversities. OR integrates culture, leadership, and IoT-enabled systems to anticipate and adapt to both gradual changes and sudden disruptions in order to maintain its core functions and secure its long-term viability. If executive leaders wish to improve the OR of their operations and provider-client relations, they must develop and adopt competencies that foster agility and flexibility in the advent of inevitable change. To do so requires a holistic approach that integrates supply chain management, risk planning, and agile staffing supported by IoT-enabled technologies and data analytics. In this post, we provide an overview of the challenges to …

The car wash industry has quietly become one of the more interesting growth stories in American retail services. What was once a fragmented collection of independent operators running basic tunnel and self-serve facilities has evolved into a highly competitive, subscription-driven industry where efficiency is the primary differentiator. The numbers reflect that shift. The global car wash services market was valued at approximately $36 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of over 6% through the early 2030s, driven by rising vehicle ownership, increasing consumer preference for professional washing over at-home alternatives, and the explosive growth of unlimited membership programs. In North America, which holds about 40% of the global market, that growth is …

Despite consistent price increases in the food away from home category, Americans can’t seem to ditch eating out or ordering in. Inflation-weary customers aren’t trading in their fast casual bowls just yet, but they are re-evaluating what compromises a safe, enjoyable customer experience when buying meals. To better understand how Americans are thinking about food away from home, specifically fast casual food choices and how that compares to other dining options, SmartSense surveyed 1,000 US-based adults (18+). In the survey, the fast casual category was defined as restaurants that primarily rely on counter service, such as Sweetgreen and CAVA; the quick serve restaurant (QSR) category was defined as dining options that traditionally have drive-thru service, such as McDonald’s and …

Especially since the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, inventory management has become a complicated, high-stakes priority for the healthcare industry. A primary lesson learned over the last several years is that, as supply chains become more globalized, their sensitivity to disruption increases. Consequently, healthcare enterprises often struggle to collect real-time data on asset location and condition, which compromises their ability to make timely decisions about inventory levels and to execute appropriate action to correct them. Inevitably, errors in inventory availability create disabling out-of-stock or wasteful overstock situations. In this post, we provide an overview of IoT-enabled best practices that help overcome challenges to healthcare inventory management. The …

Hospitals have faced continued, significant financial headwinds over the last several years, and 2026 is shaping up to be no different, even as technology budgets grow. Cost pressure is rising, ROI expectations remain elevated, and hospital teams are operating with limited resources and talent, increasing scrutiny on every dollar spent. CFOs have far less tolerance for risk as financial strain and pressure for measurable returns intensifies.   Against this backdrop, CFOs are applying a more informed and experienced lens to technology budgets. Rather than evaluating investments at a high level alone, finance leaders are drawing on a clearer understanding of which pilots succeed, where technologies fall short, and how hidden risks ultimately show up on the balance sheet. As proving ROI …

Food waste along the wholesale and retail supply chain is often blamed on downstream operations failures. Its roots, however, oftentimes lie upstream. As we will explore in this post, food waste is typically a downstream consequence of inadequate upstream Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) decision making. The scale of this issue is massive, with 30-40% of the US food supply wasted each year. The U.S. government’s goal is to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. Balancing demand & supply with sales & operations planning (S&OP) Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a cross-functional process aligning demand forecasts with supply chain capacity, resources, and financial goals. S&OP connects sales, marketing, manufacturing, and finance to create a single …