When you undertake a Connected Services journey you need to:
- identify the final destination
- divide the journey into steps
- define the route to take
To do this, you can start from the map of elements that make up a connected services offering.
0️⃣
All routes start from step 0, that is, having connected products.
1️⃣
The next step is typically “Monitoring & Control Digital Services”, that is giving basic digital capabilities for free in exchange of asking the customer to connect the product to the internet.
2️⃣
Then you could add “Performance Advisory Digital Services” 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.
3️⃣
If you also supply spare parts, at this point you might consider leveraging connected products to automate their supply (”Digitally-automated Spare Parts & Consumables Supply”).
4️⃣
If you also have a consumables business, you can consider doing the same as 3️⃣ for consumables (”(Semi-) Automated Spare Parts & Consumables Supply”).
5️⃣
At this point, or even just after step 1️⃣, it is time to make your support and maintenance services "connected” (”Reactive Connected Maintenance”).
The route taken so far has added digital capabilities to your company's business processes without fundamentally changing them. From this point on, on the other hand, digital capabilities are typically paired with an organizational change.
6️⃣
The first change is to transform support and maintenance service from reactive to proactive. That is, instead of reacting to failures, ensuring that failures do not occur, through data-driven maintenance plans (”Proactive Connected Maintenance”).
7️⃣
When you are confident about your ability to operate and to enable the customer to achieve certain performance levels, at this point you can consider taking the risk and providing “Connected Outcome-based Contracts”.
8️⃣
At this point you are ready for the last step, if your market is favorable and you have the required financial support, you can implement an equipment as a service offering (”Connected Equipment-as-a-Service”).