What Is IoT Asset Tracking? Benefits, Technologies, and Use Cases

IoT asset tracking unlocks real-time awareness, predictive power, and operational agility. It's an essential tool for businesses that need to move fast, scale globally, and protect their wares. Companies need continuous visibility, condition monitoring, and actionable insights to prevent disruptions and deliver on customer expectations. IoT asset tracking solutions empower them to drive efficiency and deliver consistent performance.

IoT technology and global cellular connectivity transform static inventories and shipments into dynamic, data-driven systems that report on location, unlock predictive maintenance, automate workflows, and drive efficiency across the entire supply chain. By leveraging these technologies, IoT OEMs can introduce new service models and simplify global rollouts, enhancing their competitive advantage and operational capabilities. These transformations not only provide end-users with unprecedented insights into their operations but also enable OEMs to expand their market reach and optimize their product offerings.

In this article, we’ll explore how IoT enhances asset tracking, the benefits of cellular connectivity, and how Zipit Wireless can help IoT OEMs elevate their asset tracking solutions.

What is IoT asset tracking? 

IoT asset tracking is the process of using IoT technologies to monitor the location, status, usage, and movement of physical assets throughout their lifecycle. Sensors, GPS modules, and wireless connectivity automatically collect and transmit data through networks to cloud platforms. Assets are simply tagged with an IoT-powered location tracker and deployed. Businesses can then view, analyze, and dynamically respond to the incoming status information in real-time. 

Asset tracking encompasses a wide variety of industries and applications, including shipments, tools in warehouses or on construction sites, fleets of vehicles, valuables, and products in inventory. Robust, real-time tracking capabilities ensure that businesses always know what assets they have, where they are, how they’re being used, and the condition of the asset. 

IoT solutions empower businesses to optimize shipping and delivery routes, trigger predictive maintenance, prevent loss, and facilitate maximum operational efficiency. Live insights into an item’s location and condition allow for immediate response time and rapid strategic pivots.   

How has IoT connectivity shaped asset tracking?

Asset tracking serves as a stellar example of widely adopted IoT connectivity and business implementation. Asset tracking was one of the earliest and most visible verticals to explode with IoT innovations. 

IoT asset tracking devices quickly gained purchase because they solved a clear, universal business problem faced by a diverse array of industries. Knowing where items are, their condition, and whether they are secure is enormously beneficial for industries ranging from shipping and logistics to restaurants and ecommerce websites. Whether monitoring pallets and shipping containers in transportation, the location of tools within a warehouse, or the status of high-value goods, businesses quickly discovered the enormous and immediate value of IoT-fueled asset visibility. Now, IoT-powered asset tracking is the gold standard across applications and industries, with anything less being considered substandard and outdated.  

How does IoT asset tracking work?

An IoT asset tracking solution uses unique tagging assets and connectivity to capture localized, individualized data and transmit it to a central tracking software system to manage performance and provide real-time visibility throughout an asset’s lifecycle. 

Through key components, like scannable technology, IoT-powered sensors, edge devices and gateways, connectivity network technologies, cloud platforms, and tracking software, asset tracking monitors the location, progress, and status of the connected devices. 

1. IoT sensors are attached to assets

Small, IoT-powered sensors are physically affixed to the tracked asset. These sensors perpetually collect crucial data points, like GPS-targeted location, temperature and humidity, motion or vibration, light exposure, tampering, battery level, and engine hours. 

2. The captured data is sent to the cloud via wireless connectivity

Data is transmitted to the cloud through wireless connectivity technologies, typically via cellular networks. LPWANs, like LTE-M and NB-IoT, are ideal for mobile, wide-area device tracking and offer long battery life and low-data support. Technologies like LTE Cat 1 bis and the emerging 5G Redcap network also offer device support designed for IoT applications. It’s essential that devices can maintain continuous connectivity across regions and networks for optimal performance.

3. Cloud software aggregates and visualizes data

The data is ultimately received and processed by a cloud-based platform or IoT tracking software. These platforms often display real-time maps and dashboards, allowing real-time insights into an asset’s status. These integrate with ERPs, fleet management solutions, and billing systems to unify and streamline internal processes and support robust analytical reporting. These software solutions are also programmed to alert stakeholders in the event of complications, such as delays, geofence breaches, or temperature elevations. 

4. The data drives automation, business intelligence, and analytics

Once live data is centralized, companies can track locations, monitor conditions, schedule predictive maintenance, optimize logistics and operations, and enable highly accurate and usage-based billing by logging asset activity with remarkable precision. These capabilities preserve business margins by preventing loss, theft, and delays and ensuring consistent quality. 

What are the benefits of asset tracking IoT devices?

As businesses manage increasingly complex supply chains and high-value equipment across diverse locations, smarter asset tracking is integral. Real-time visibility, automated monitoring, and data-driven analytics offer significant benefits to nearly every industry that manages physical assets. Through reducing loss, improving efficiency, and ensuring compliance, IoT technology gives businesses the control and intelligence to manage assets with confidence and precision. 

IoT-enabled tracking combines multi-network connectivity and cloud-based analytics to deliver continuous telemetry from the field, enabling real-time geolocation, environmental sensing, predictive maintenance, and seamless integration with enterprise platforms. This offers a scalable, programmable foundation for building smarter, more resilient business operations. 

1. Real-time location tracking

• Live, continuous visibility into where assets are positioned, whether within a facility, en route across regions, or deployed globally. 
• Easily follow mobile assets like trucks, containers, tools, and rental equipment for exact locating and granular deployment strategization. 
• Continuous geolocation updates prevent loss, theft, and delays 

2. Condition monitoring

• IoT sensors can precisely track metrics like temperature, humidity, shock, tilt, vibration, and light exposure, making it ideal for condition-sensitive goods like perishables, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and fine art. 
• Real-time alerts if predetermined thresholds are exceeded, allowing for corrective action and damage control before the product is compromised. 

3. Data-driven predictive maintenance 

• IoT devices collect usage and performance data (like operating hours, fluid levels, temperature anomalies, and vibration levels) to detect early signs of wear or malfunction to prevent costly breakdowns. 
• Service is scheduled before problems occur, reducing unplanned outages, increasing machine uptime, and extending the asset’s lifecycle. 

4. Improved operational efficiency

• Automates and streamlines processes via asset check-ins, usage tracking, and inventory counts.
• Reduces manual labor, human error, and overall administrative overhead. 
• Teams gain access to accurate data in real time, boosting productivity, asset utilization, and improving resource allocation and route optimization 

5. Enhanced security and theft protection

• Set proactive asset security measures through geofences, receiving alerts if an asset moves outside an approved area
• Enable remote immobilization and lockout of stolen equipment or unauthorized usage. Deter misuse via tamper detection, movement tracking, and remote controls
  
  

  6. Scalability and global reach

• IoT deployments can easily scale from ten to tens of thousands of connected assets without requiring infrastructural overhaul (as opposed to manual asset tracking operations). Just tag, connect, and track assets. 
• Cellular connectivity options seamlessly cover a wide range of deployment models and environments.

7. Actionable insights and analytics 

• Turn asset data into operational intelligence by observing which assets are overused or underutilized, where bottlenecks are occurring, and the financial impact of idle time on your business 
• Leverage historical trends and behavioral patterns to predict risk, uncover inefficiencies, optimize usage, and forecast data needs, delivery timelines, and budgets.  

Traditional asset tracking vs. IoT-powered asset tracking 

IoT-powered asset tracking offers automation, real-time visibility, extended range, remote accessibility, and data-driven, up-to-date intelligence and analytics. This far outpaces what can be offered by the limited insights offered by manually tracking assets. 

Learn more: IoT Device Management: How to Control Cellular IoT Devices Successfully

What types of assets are typically tracked using IoT technologies?

IoT asset tracking is incredibly versatile and is applied to any physical item where visibility, security, and efficiency are crucial. From an individual traveler’s suitcase on an international flight to a worldwide deployment of industrial machinery in remote locations, IoT technology makes it possible to know where assets are and how they’re being handled. 

Inventory

Retailers, manufacturers, and warehouses use IoT tracking to maintain accurate, up-to-date stock levels. Smart shelves, RFID tags, and IoT sensors help reduce stockouts, prevent over-ordering, and improve fulfillment accuracy. 

Shipments, packages, and pallets

Logistics companies deploy IoT trackers on shipping containers, pallets, and parcels to monitor location and condition throughout transit. Sensors can also be programmed to detect temperature, humidity, vibration, shock, and tampering. This allows for rapid responsiveness to changing conditions, protecting products from damage and theft. 

This information is especially useful for any cold chain products requiring refrigeration, like meat and dairy, pharmaceuticals, frozen foods, and ice. Slight fluctuations in heat can cause massive losses and create downstream inventory shortages if they aren’t addressed promptly. 

Vehicles and fleets

Trucks, delivery vans, and ride-share vehicles are all carefully tracked and scrutinized through IoT-enabled technology. IoT trackers can provide live GPS data and optimize routes, enabling improved efficiency. They can also ensure cost-efficiency and ongoing high performance by monitoring fuel consumption and sending maintenance alerts.  

Equipment, machinery, and tools 

From construction and warehouses to healthcare facilities and rental businesses, there are innumerable applications that need to know the location, status, and condition of their equipment. Tracking tools within a jobsite can improve efficiency and protect businesses from theft, and monitoring machine performance and utilization frequency can help circumvent costly and disruptive breakdowns. Asset tracking is also commonly used in the agricultural industry to monitor not only the whereabouts of farm equipment, but also the location and status of their livestock. 

Personal goods and high-value assets 

Consumers increasingly use IoT asset tracking technology for luggage, pets, bikes, keys, expensive possessions, or even loved ones like children or an elderly parent. Compact devices with cellular connectivity provide peace of mind and can help return lost or stolen property. Businesses that deal with high-value goods, like artwork, electronics, jewelry, high-end fashion, or pharmaceuticals, use IoT asset tracking devices to keep constant oversight over their valuable wares.  

Why global cellular connectivity is important for IoT asset tracking

Whether assets are moving across networks, countries, or even continents, their connectivity solutions should be able to seamlessly keep them online and responsive. Global cellular connectivity equals global visibility. For highly mobile, border-crossing assets, this insight is essential and unfeasible with Wi-Fi connectivity alone. A worldwide cellular presence encourages resilience, reliability, and failover across carrier networks, while simplifying scalability and avoiding fragmentation. Real-time analytics inform predictive maintenance, improve billing standards, and fuel better business decisions for industries ranging from logistics and construction to healthcare and retail. 

1. Global visibility

When assets are in motion, their owners and handlers need up-to-date insight on their placement, be they vehicles, seaborne containers, medical supplies, or fresh produce. Cellular networks, like 4G/5G, LTE-M, and NB-IoT, provide wide-area and sometimes cross-border coverage that cannot be matched by fixed networks like Wi-Fi. However, when asset tracker owners access relationships with global carriers, they can enable unimpeded tracking and data collection anywhere in the world. 

2. Scalability, reliability, and resilience across borders

Reliance on a single carrier often creates coverage gaps when the IoT sensor exits the carrier’s regional footprint. To truly be successful, asset trackers need to transition across carriers to preserve robust connections and avoid the complications and limitations that can accompany global travel and roaming. Unbroken connectivity, whether devices cross state lines or international borders, is absolutely vital for the success of asset tracking deployments that need to be traceable and dynamically responsive, regardless of their geographical positioning.  

Learn more: Permanent Roaming for IoT: Challenges, Risks, and Solutions

3. Accurate, transparent billing

Cellular connectivity enables real-time usage logging across geographies, ensuring OEMs and IoT asset tracking providers can accurately and consistently bill their customers. Auditable, transparent service records are vital for strengthening customer trust and preserving business profitability. Powerful, global cellular connectivity promotes precise and reliable IoT billing infrastructure. This also facilitates critical ongoing IoT monetization models, like subscriptions. 

4. Real-time data for business operations

Cross-border supply chains depend on live updates. Sensors, GPS signals, and cellular triangulation inform location, condition, and usage metrics as devices remain continuously in transit. Global cellular connectivity ensures this data is fed into the relevant dashboards, allowing for automated workflows and status alerts to function regardless of an asset’s location. 

Learn more: What is an IoT Platform?

How Zipit Wireless empowers global IoT asset tracking solutions

IoT asset tracking solutions thrive on flexible, reliable global connectivity to track their devices as they traverse the globe. However, expanding beyond domestic borders introduces a maze of fragmented carrier agreements, technical hurdles, and operational complexities that can prevent deployments from maximizing their reach. Zipit Wireless helps IoT device OEMs bridge this gap by offering seamless global connectivity, customized SIM strategies, unified management platforms, and adaptable billing solutions. At Zipit, we offer innovative, market-informed IoT solutions customized to meet the unique needs of every business. 

Global access to seamless cellular connectivity

Global cellular carriers require separate contracts, each with its own unique set of provisions, billing cycles, restrictions, and nuances. Managing this as an individual OEM is an incredibly daunting task. Achieving affordable rates and data plans and maximized coverage is rarely possible without an intermediary with an established relationship. 

Zipit Wireless offers multi-network cellular connectivity across international Tier-1 carriers, in addition to strong relationships with every major US carrier. We eliminate the need for IoT OEMs to juggle dozens of complex carrier contracts and allow them to focus on their strengths of innovation and expansion.

SIM solutions tailored to every use case

From native carrier SIMs to Global SIMs and eSIMs, there are many different types of connectivity and SIM form factors for IoT-powered asset tracking solutions. Zipit Wireless wants to ensure that your deployment is outfitted with the perfect SIM and connectivity strategy to position your device for seamless scalability and maximized uptime. Whether that’s focusing on creating a single SKU for global deployment or leveraging localized carriers that can maximize cost efficiency in key markets, we collaborate with our clients on strategies that enable resilience. An early partnership with Zipit lets us help to guide you in your decisions from the hardware design stage to the global rollout of devices, and in doing so, avoid common mistakes that can be costly down the road.

Dynamic connectivity management platforms

Our multi-carrier platform unifies workflows and reporting across domestic and international cellular network providers, ensuring that you can manage your deployments from a singular source of truth. Offload the tedious, time-consuming task of operational management with our robust connectivity platform, and offer your end-customers a sophisticated user experience to activate and track their devices. 

Learn more: 10 Key Features of an IoT Connectivity Management Platform

Simplified billing for massive IoT deployments 

Zipit Wireless’s billing platform is a turnkey, white-label billing solution designed to simplify how IoT companies monetize connectivity and related services. It enables businesses to launch subscription billing services complete with branded customer portals and streamlined payment workflows. Additionally, it unites real-time asset visibility with data-usage trends, subscription analytics, and renewal alerts, allowing OEMs to ensure effective monetization strategies for their asset tracking operations. We also assist with common IoT billing challenges and global tax compliance, a necessary feature for global IoT deployments. 

Transform your asset tracking solutions with Zipit Wireless

We build foundations that empower future-proofed solutions by empowering innovators to scale faster, operate smarter, and deliver dependable asset tracking solutions anywhere in the world. Contact us and learn more about how Zipit empowers IoT innovators to succeed on a global scale and elevate your asset tracking operations.

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