Routes for your Connected Services journey

Undertaking a Connected Services journey may take a while. Therefore, we recommend plotting and planning a route.

To do this, you should first identify the business initiatives your company has decided to focus on.

Business initiatives that can generate and shape a Connected Services journey are:

Then you can divide each initiative into smaller elements, enabling you to reach intermediate milestones.

At this point you can plot a route that moves forward along all the initiatives, one element at a time.

To do this, you can use the map of elements that make up a connected services offering.

Routes for your Connected Services journey

Routes for your Connected Services journey, from Connected Products to Connected Equipment-as-a-Service

Let's take an example.

Letā€™s assume that your company has decided to undertake the ā€œDigital Servicesā€ and ā€œSmart After-salesā€ business initiatives.

0ļøāƒ£ The starting point is step 0, that is, having connected products.

1ļøāƒ£ The next step is typically designing and offering ā€œBase Digital Servicesā€, that is giving basic digital capabilities for free in exchange of asking the customer to connect the product to the internet.

5ļøāƒ£ You are now ready to implement the element ā€œReactive connected after-sales ā€œ, which is to make your current after-sales services ā€˜connectedā€™ while keeping them reactive.

2ļøāƒ£ At this point you could add ā€œValue-added Digital Servicesā€ to your offering, that is selling to end customers digital capabilities that positively impact their business, helping them reaching the performance they expect from the product.

6ļøāƒ£ Finally you can implement the last element of a Smart After-sales initiative, ā€œProactive smart after-salesā€, which is, instead of reacting to failures, ensuring that failures do not occur, through smart, data-driven maintenance plans.

Mastering element 6 means you are confident about your ability to operate proactively and to enable your customers to achieve performance levels they expect. This is an excellent starting point to absorb a further degree of risk and launch the ā€œConnected Advanced Servicesā€ business initiative, be it 7ļøāƒ£ providing outcome-based contracts or 8ļøāƒ£ an equipment-as-a-Service offering.

In case your company also supply spare parts and/or consumables, at any moment after element 1 you might consider leveraging connected products to 3ļøāƒ£ streamline or 4ļøāƒ£ automate their supply.