Service Model Transformation Enhanced By Digital Transformation

The manufacturing industry is no stranger to disruption or transformation. New entrants, shifts in customer buying behavior, supply chain constraints, regulations, geopolitics all have provided varying degrees of strife for discrete and process manufacturers throughout history, and all seem to have had a sometimes-crippling effect over the past 12-24 months.

As much as things change, they stay the same. The manufacturing industry however has had to confront the need to think differently even as the challenges seem like those of the past.

Along this journey of digital transformation, manufacturers are establishing a broader set of offerings which now include more value-add services for customers. Historically, manufacturers or their dealers focused primarily on consumable sales or standard service contracts to ensure equipment uptime and customer productivity. However, as commoditization of products and rising customer expectations for experiences grew, the ability for a manufacturer to deliver a new set of outcomes has now become table stakes.

In IDC’s Product and Service Innovation Survey (May 2021, n=808), manufacturers stated a need for faster response to product quality & service issues, the desire to improve key customer metrics, and to establish more capabilities around remote service, collaboration, and resolution as top drivers for their respective service lifecycle management efforts. As manufacturers decide to address these drivers and others, I recommend these companies consider confronting the following questions:

What do your customers or customer’s customers value?
Does your organization have the digital capabilities to address business model shifts quickly at scale?
Does line-of-business work with IT to identify, select, and deploy new technologies?
Do your dealers, distributors, suppliers, and partners have a shared set of insights to act upon?
Do you have the leadership in place across the enterprise to weather future disruptions with both a short- and long-term strategic vision?

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