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 “Connected Services staircase”.
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 |
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