Many opportunities and possibilities exist for tech service organisations to develop new services and business models using IoT. However, because IT and business teams do not often fully understand each other, chances are it takes a long time to implement new business models that are profitable.
"Complex business transformations, such as implementing new business models, have risks," says Hilbrand Rustema, Managing Director of consultancy firm Noventum. "Like, for example, the different perspectives of business and IT teams which can lead to delays or even not achieving your goals." In this blog, Hilbrand explains Noventum's vision and approach on how you can accelerate time to market by using service industry best practice models.
Best practices: the key to success
Hilbrand: "At Noventum, we help manufacturers and service companies discover and design new service value propositions and manage the transformation to those new business models. We do a lot of research and have done so for dozens of companies. As a result, we have developed service industry standards, best practices, and a proven methodology for service transformations. For many businesses, making the switch to new business models can take as long as three years. We can make that time to value three times faster, reducing it to one year. An important key to success is standardisation and choosing best practices. This ensures speed and momentum, which is necessary for the actual realisation of your objectives."
From vision to roadmap and realization
"First of all, we help service organisations develop a vision. What does the transformation of their organisation look like? How do you realize growth and higher profitability with, for e.g., new service propositions and technology? We then help them realise that vision by creating a clear roadmap involving all stakeholders and establish a common service operating model. Best practices are essential here.
Numerous service organisations work in a decentralized way. Different parts have their own method of working. However, a shared 'common service operating model' is necessary for new business models to be successful."
Why standardise when every customer is different?
"Isn't standardisation a disadvantage, precisely because every customer is different? We regularly hear that argument. But by reducing your services to several core products and standardising them as much as possible, you make the complexity manageable. You can then easily expand these services with other tailor-made options for customers, where required. This brings speed and flexibility to the business. It also offers the ability to automate everything on the same IT platform to innovate more quickly."
Building the bridge between business and IT
Hilbrand recognizes in the transformation process, there is often a delay that occurs in the communication between the business and IT. Hilbrand: "This is a risk that is well-known to arise if the application developers are insufficiently involved in the design phase. When the 'translation' or transfer of the requirements are communicated, the agile development team has an insufficient understanding of the why and how of the changes. Consequently, they cannot make the necessary switch. This might cause a lag in achieving the business objectives later. Further, during the business design phase, there is often insufficient knowledge of the standard available "out of the box" functionality of the chosen IT platform and customisation is requested.
In addition to involving the IT development team in the business design phase, we provide blueprints, IT architecture and best practices for standard IT solutions that are needed to implement standard processes. These are written in IT language, using clear user stories from the business. For the implementation of the right software and applications we like to work with implementation partners like HSO. This is because they are the Microsoft Field Service product specialists and have the right experience. Consequently, we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel and therefore see a faster time to market. This often results in millions in extra profit for each project.”
New business models deliver value if basic processes are in order
"If field service companies have their standard basic processes in order and have automated as much as possible, a world of opportunities opens up in which data plays a key role. Think of equipment as a service or the delivery of utility (the result) instead of the availability of a machine. That's how we help manufacturing and service companies generate profitable and sustainable revenue with services."