The Digital Services map is a practical tool to compose your Digital Service portfolio and navigate your Digital Servitization journey. It shows where you are and where you can go, and it helps you define your strategy, plan the next steps, and track progress over time.
You need it because Digital Servitization is a long-term journey. Without a clear picture of the possible directions, it is easy to lose focus, or to invest in the wrong area at the wrong time.
You can also call this map the Digital Servitization map. The two names show two different points of view:
- Digital Services map: you focus on composing your portfolio of digital service solutions.
- Digital Servitization map: you focus on transforming your portfolio and your business model, and on evolving your solutions accordingly.
The map has two dimensions.
Dimension 1: Your value proposition
This dimension comes from the Services Staircase, developed by the Advanced Services Group. It describes the type of value you offer to your customers. We have adapted it into seven steps:
- Enabling base: the foundation, with connected products, data collection, compliance
- Product: access to product information and documentation
- Spare Parts: supply of spare parts
- Repair: restoration of product condition after a failure
- Maintenance: proactive maintenance to prevent failures
- Performance: guidance to help customers get more value from products
- Outcomes: guarantee of the results customers care about
Each step represents a more advanced value proposition. The higher you go, the more value you deliver.
In the map, this dimension answers the question: what value proposition is your digitalization supporting?
Learn more: What is the Services Staircase?
Dimension 2: The role of digitalization
This dimension describes what you want digitalization to do at each step of the staircase. There are four possible roles.
DATA → INFORMATION
Role 1: Generate relevant information
You collect data from your installed base and your connected products and turn it into useful information.
As you climb the staircase, that information becomes more valuable: you start from operational data and move up to performance and outcome-related insights.
DATA → ACTION
Role 2: Support your end customer operations
Self-service digital solutions help your customers use your connected products better: monitoring, alerts, recommendations, troubleshooting. A digital solution works on your behalf and gives you a practical choice: what do you include in a service contract, and what do you let your customers handle on their own?
Role 3: Support your internal or external service team operations
Your internal teams, your distributors, your dealers, your installers: all of them need tools to work faster and smarter. Digitalization gives them the right information at the right moment and helps them manage the full service cycle.
As you climb the staircase, this role becomes essential: it is what allows you and your partners to absorb more risk, and deliver more value to your end customers.
DATA → MONETIZATION
Role 4: Enable and stimulate after-sales monetization
Generating value is not enough: you also need to capture it. Digitalization helps you manage the complexity of a rich product-service offering: services, subscriptions, spare parts, performance advisory, advanced contracts.
The map
By combining the two dimensions, you get a grid. Each cell represents a specific combination of value proposition and role of digitalization.
The Digital Services map: value proposition (vertical axis) vs. role of digitalization (horizontal axis).
The granularity is meaningful: each cell corresponds to a concrete digital solution with a clear purpose and clear objectives.
Here are three examples.
Example 1: Repair + Support your internal or external service team operations
The digital solution helps your service teams work more efficiently. It supports remote diagnostics using telemetry data or AR tools, so your service teams can diagnose and resolve issues faster.
Example 2: Spare Parts + Enable and stimulate after-sales monetization
The digital solution helps your customers purchase spare parts, and helps you sell them, based on actual product usage or condition.
Example 3: Performance + Generate relevant information
The digital solution processes product, service, and telemetry data to compute performance-related KPIs such as uptime, OEE, energy efficiency, production rate.
How to use the map
You can use the map in two ways.
1. Compose your Digital Service portfolio
The map helps you build your Digital Service portfolio. Each cell is a possible digital solution, and together the cells you choose describe what you deliver to your customers and how you support the work of your internal and external service teams.
2. Navigate your Digital Servitization journey
The map helps you plan your Digital Servitization journey over time. It shows where you are today and where you want to go, so you can define your own sequence of steps and track your progress.