The IoT Profit Cycle is the result of a multi-year research project together with 31 companies. As a fundamental performance management tool, it transfers the core idea of the Balance Scorecard to the IoT domain. The IoT Profit Cycle is based on four fundamental perspectives that are related to each other.

The IoT Profit Cycle includes leading and lagging indicators. Furthermore, the IoT Profit Cycle addresses the challenge that IoT-enabled revenues are often significantly deferred, i.e. there might be a substantial time between investment and monetization, and indirect, i.e. customers might not be willing to directly pay for digital services.

The dimensions and key performance indicators of the IoT Profit Cycle illustrate the most essential cause-effect relationships in the development and scaling up of the IoT business. Successful IoT companies apply the Minimal Viable Product approach to their IoT KPI system. They first start with a minimal viable set of KPIs, which is used to gain initial experience in managing the IoT business. In a second step they adapt and extend it to effectively monitor and manage their IoT journey.