A change towards an integrated solutions
provider requires a wider scope of competences, such as customer business
understanding, technology knowledge, auditing, consulting, communications and
supply management or partnering. A study by Windahl, Andersson, Berggren and
Nehler on “Manufacturing firms and integrated solutions: characteristics and
implications” by European Journal of Innovation Management vol 7 iss 3 pp.
218-228 indicates that intelligent technology enables a continuous optimisation
of customer operations. Developing services to complement the installed base requires
fewer assets, is often counter cyclical and can provide higher margins.
Characteristic in a change process away
from hardware or capital intense production is focusing more on customer
process throughout the customer journey, including both business planning and
operations. Some models may include even possibility for customers to operate
equipment or installation without owning, maintaining or operating it.
Within the transformation, a key success
factor is to plan how to build the capabilities supporting the customer
performance. According to Windahl, Andersson, Berggren and Nehler, some key
factors are: pricing models, generating new performance indicators against the
traditional manufacturing set-up, increased risk taking and changing the
relationship with customers and partners, including increased customer
interaction and co-production. In their competence development model, they see
a difference of “shaping the market” and a “interacting” as a strategic
orientation. Listed key competences of an integrated solutions provider include
technical and application competence, systems integration competence,
partnering competence, as well as market / business and consulting competence.
It is no wonder companies are currently
investing in advanced customer understanding models, CRM systems and continuous
sales competence development. All gears towards collecting a flow of
information from customers. Not only related to customer business and their needs,
but increasingly into customer operational profiles, use data and related
analytics. Providing integrated solutions is building a consistent business
model with a customer, the solutions provider being an integral part of
customers operations on a daily basis.
Not all customers are into ways of risk
reduction and differentiating their services to their own customers. Thus a
manufacturing company need to consider - and decide - the level of
transformation they aim at, how much to build on existing manufacturing
capabilities, how much to invest in building service and solutions capabilities
– and to which customers to focus on. One way is to separate manufacturing
altogether and build a new approach for customer focused solutions business
with new metrics, culture and incentives.
