How to design a Connected Services strategy

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A Connected Services strategy is an action plan that defines the end goals, intermediate milestones, and activities needed to successfully leverage data from connected products data to optimize and enrich your service offering.

You can develop this strategy on its own, or you can incorporate it into a broader digital servitization journey that includes other digital technologies.

Designing and developing your Connected Services offering

To support you in defining your Connected Services offering and planning its development over time, we have developed the ā€œConnected Services staircaseā€.

Connected Services Staircase and Business Initiatives

Connected Services staircase

Defining your strategy means identifying your current position on the staircase and plotting your route to the elements you want to develop.

Among all the possible routes, there are a few typical ones, which group together the elements that have common characteristics, goals, success factors and involved stakeholders.

These routes correspond to business initiatives that arise within corporate strategic plans.

Let us now explore the 4 typical business initiatives in detail.

The 4 typical Business Initiatives within a Connected Services strategy

We distinguish the 4 typical Business Initiatives within a Connected Services strategy according to:

  • what you do with data

  • the business goal

  • the type of offer toward the customer, what the customer buys

  • the typical contract model

  • the person within the organization leading the initiative

  • the type of involvement of field service teams to deliver the service

  • the role of the Customer Portal of the DPS system

  • the role of the Digital Control Room of the DPS system

Digital Services

Smart Spare Parts & Consumables

Connected Field Services

Connected Advanced Services

You harness data to …

offer a data-driven digital solution to help your end customers use and maintain the product, enabling them to gain concrete benefits, such as time or consumption savings, increased productivity or efficiency, greater peace of mind

simplify and automate the supply of spare parts and consumables, identifying when replacement is needed and supporting the order and purchase workflow

support and empower your service teams, both internal and external, with data, actionable information and workflow supporting capabilities

extract all the necessary information and support the field activities required to guarantee your customers’ outcomes

Your business goal is …

strengthen the relationship with your customers, reinforce the sales of connected products and, possibly, generate a new revenue stream from digital subscriptions

make the supply process of spare parts or consumables more efficient, increase revenue and make revenue recurring

improve the efficiency and effectiveness of activities performed by your and your partners’ field service teams, evolve towards a proactive service and generate new revenue from value-added service contracts or digital subscriptions for your partners

generate and capture more value by delivering outcomes and minimize the risks you absorb

The customer pays for …

access to data, actionable information and workflow supporting capabilities

spare parts, when needed

repair and maintenance activities

outcomes

Typical contract

free or subscription

transaction or subscription

transaction or subscription

subscription

The initiative is typically led by …

product manager

spare parts sales manager / service manager

service manager

service manager

Type of involvement of field service teams

-

-

delivery of technical assistance, repair and maintenance activities

delivery of maintenance activities under a service level agreement

Customers use the Connected Customer Portal of the DPS system to …

access data, actionable information, and workflow-supporting capabilities

order spare parts or set up automatic order policies

interact with the service team, and monitor activities performed

interact with the service team, monitor activities and have a transparent and detailed drill-down into outcomes measurement

Service teams use the Digital Control Room of the DPS system to …

-

-

perform remote diagnostics, troubleshooting, proactive monitoring, smart maintenance planning

perform remote diagnostics, troubleshooting, proactive monitoring, smart maintenance planning and outcomes measurement

Learn more here:

Digital Services

Smart Spare Parts & Consumables

Connected Field Services

Connected Advanced Services