The Productivity Paradox: Is There a Measurement Problem?

There's been much debate in recent months about the productivity paradox - put simply there's a long standing concern that technology, particularly information technology, does not seem to deliver the productivity gains that might be expected. This concern has resurfaced in the UK, with the Government raising questions about why the UK's productivity has not grown as much as other countries. In fact George Osborne recently called the UK's low productivity growth "the challenge of our time".

This same topic came up in a recent email discussion with colleagues from ISSIP - the International Society for Service Innovation Professionals. This time prompted by an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Silicon Valley Doesn't Believe US Productivity is Down". In essence the Wall Street Journal argument was that developments in technology are not captured in the Government's productivity figures - apps that help people find restaurants more quickly or hail cabs from their phones clearly improve the efficiency with which we can do things. Doing more with less is a classic definition of productivity - so these apps must be improving productivity argues the Wall Street Journal (and those it quotes - including Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist).

While I accept the argument that apps and associated technologies allow us to do more with less, I think there's a need to unpack the relationship between these developments and measures of productivity more carefully. Traditionally governments have measured labour productivity - in terms of GDP per hour worked. As technology replaces labour, GDP stays the same or increases, while labour hours go down - hence productivity increases.

However, there's an interesting new phenomenon which complicates the picture. Take, for example, Uber. I'm a fan of Uber - the app is great. Its convenient. I've never had a bad service from an Uber driver. I love the fact that I can rate drivers and they can rate customers at the end of journeys. I love the fact that the cost of the ride gets charged to my credit card and the receipt automatically emailed to me. But I also love Uber because it is cheaper - I pay less for a Uber car than I do for a black cab in London. Better service, pleasant drivers, lower prices - what's not to like. Other firms have similar business models - think Amazon or Airbnb. Still others provide me a service for free - Google and TripAdvisor - don't charge me for the information they provide, instead making their money through third parties.

When talking about productivity - or the lack of productivity - we need to think about the economic impact of these cheaper and/or free services. Lower prices to consumers must mean lower GDP. The efficiency gains are there, but they are not being captured in productivity gains because the benefits are being passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices, rather than captured in the official GDP statistics. Maybe a more nuanced discussion about productivity is needed - where we look at both sides of the equation - increases in value and hence GDP - and increases in efficiency reflected in lower costs to consumers.

Rethinking Competition and Collaboration in Ecosystems: Who Should You Work With?

One of the themes that keeps emerging in the work of the Cambridge Service Alliance is the importance of the ecosystem. We define an ecosystem as the wider network of firms and organisations that can or could influence the way the focal firm creates and captures value through the provision of its products and services. Members of this wider network might include, but are not limited to: collaborators, regulators, clients, customers and consumers, their stakeholders, suppliers and competitors.

Why does an ecosystem perspective matter? The first reason is that thinking about ecosystems encourages executives to take a broader view on the opportunities they face. This argument was first made by Moore in his Harvard Business Review article - "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition". As the boundaries between traditional industrial sectors break down organisations change the way the create value for their customers. Take a simple example - airlines. Are they in the travel business? After all their primary function is to transport people from A to B. Are they in the entertainment and catering business - they feed and entertain people while on their planes. Are they in the holiday business? Witness the emergence of BA and Virgin holidays. Are they in the telecoms business - think about in flight telecoms and wireless services. Even more extreme examples are seen in electronics and telecommunications. Phone companies now double as internet service providers. They offer on demand TV and video services. They are debating what else they can do given the cables they have running into your house. Utilities companies in general are blurring - water companies will provide gas and electricity. Gas companies will reduce the price you pay if you buy electricity from them as well. An even more radical example is provided by electric vehicles - some are exploring how they might be used as energy storage devices when not being driven. Boundaries between sectors are blurring and disappearing. As they do new opportunities emerge. Being constrained by a logic that says "we are an automotive firm" or "we are a pharmaceutical firm" simply limits innovation and creativity.

This theme of innovation and creativity is a second reason why ecosystem thinking is so important. Firms define often themselves in terms of their markets, customers and competitors. Yet one thing we have seen in our work is the increasingly complex nature of inter-organisational relationships. It is common to see firms competing for some contracts, while collaborating on others. IBM, for example, competes with software vendors such as Oracle and SAP, yet also installs Oracle and SAP systems when their customers want them to. BAE Systems partners with Babcock to deliver services at Portsmouth Naval Base, yet competes with Babcock for other MoD contracts. This complex and nested set of relationships raises some interesting questions. If you define another organisation solely as your competitor there's a danger you miss opportunities for innovation and collaboration. The car industry provides an excellent example. Many car manufacturers have close relationships with (or in some cases own) Dealer networks. They see the Dealer as the primary route to market and the obvious choice for all after-sales service and support. Yet there are loads of small, independent garages that offer vehicle service and support. Often customers prefer these independent garages - they are cheaper, operate with lower overheads and only use genuine original equipment spares when needed. Traditionally the automotive manufacturers have seen these independent garages as the enemy. They take work from the Dealer network, build direct relationships with the end customer and generally disrupt the industry.

But if you draw a broader circle and include these "annoying independent garages" in your ecosystem, you could - as an original equipment manufacturer - start to ask how might we collaborate with these independent garages? Should we offer to manage their spare parts inventories through consignment stocks? Should we provide them specialist tooling and equipment, creating a larger market for proprietary technologies? As the use of telematics and remote monitoring increases, should we - the original equipment manufacturer - sell the engine diagnostic data to independent garages to help them provide better service to their customers? Perhaps the original equipment manufacturer can create a more seamless, integrated and lower cost service for their customers by collaborating with their traditional competitors.

Its only when you start to challenges the assumptions that you hold about how your industry operates and where the boundaries lie that you start to think creatively about the opportunities that are open to you. Taking an ecosystem perspective and broadening your horizon is a great way of thinking about how you might innovate your business model.

Business Model Innovation and the Evolving Market for Electric Vehicles

Much has been written in recent years - both about business model innovation and electric vehicles. One of the Cambridge Service Alliance PhD students, Claire Weiller, has been studying the evolving market for electric vehicles - looking at the business models adopted by Better Place in California, TEPCO in Japan, Autolib' in Paris and Move About in Norway. Claire's just finished her PhD thesis and I thought it was timely to create a short summary of her research insights. Of course if you want the full story you'll have to: (i) talk to Claire, (ii) read her thesis and/or (iii) have a look at the various reports available on the Cambridge Service Alliance website. For the sake of efficiency, however, here's a short summary of Claire's key findings...

There's no uniform business model for electric vehicles...
The first thing that the research shows is that there is no uniform business model for electric vehicles. The different firms studied adopted different models - ranging from battery swapping (Better Place), fast charging (TEPCO) through to mobility as a service (Autolib' and Move About). Clearly there are different pros and cons to each of these business models.

Battery swapping as a business model...
The battery swapping business model is based on the premise that the cost of the battery is a significant deterrent to customers buying electric vehicles. So Better Place experimented with a model where customers bought cars, but then leased batteries from Better Place. The idea was that when the battery was running out of charge you could call into a battery swapping station and replace the discharged battery with a fully charged one in less than five minutes. Customers pay a monthly fee for the privilege of using Better Place's services, as well as a charge "per mile".

Better Place filed for bankruptcy in May 2013 despite having raised $850 million investment. The fundamental flaw in the model was the failure to create a standard battery adopted by multiple auto manufacturers. Because the Better Place battery was not widely adopted it became impossible to efficiently manage the range of inventory - different batteries for different marks of vehicle. The battery swapping model could still work, but it requires coordination across the ecosystem, with the vehicle manufacturers agreeing a standard for batteries that would simplify the challenges of logistics and distribution.

Fast charging as a business model...
One of the barriers to consumer adoption of Electric Vehicles is the issue of range anxiety - the fear that the car won't go as far as you need it to. Couple with this is the time taken to refuel the car (or recharge the battery). If it takes too long and you have to recharge too frequently then clearly Electric Vehicles offering significantly worse performance than regular cars. To address these concerns an alternative business model is fast charging - firms like TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) are investing in technologies to speed up the time take to recharge batteries. Today's fast-charging technology allow a 100-mile electronic vehicle with 24kWh of storage to fully charge in less than 30 minutes. Even 20 minutes gives an 80% recharge. TEPCO - through its CHAdeMO fast-charging connector - have been trying to shape an international standard for fast-charging technologies. They appeared to be making good progress, but were blown off course by the Fukushima tsunami that severely damaged four of TEPCO's six nuclear reactors. The subsequent clean up costs and the decision to shut down nuclear reactors in Japan have put an enormous financial burden on TEPCO and so their efforts recently have been diverted. 

Mobility as a service... 
The final business model studied concerned mobility as a service. Both Move About (Norway) and Autolib' (Paris) were examples of this. Under the mobility as a service business model customers does not take ownership of the product, but instead pay for the right to use the product - through a monthly subscription fee - supplemented by a time-based usage fee. The context for both Autolib' and Move About is interesting. Autolib' is heavily supported by the Marie de Paris and focuses its service on Paris and the surrounding 63 municipalities. Bolloré, an industrial conglomerate with activities in transport, infrastructure and logistics, won the contract to support Autolib' and provides the cars, as well as the charging infrastructure. The density of Paris - 105 km² versus London with 1,570 km² - means that a car with a 250 km range covers almost 100% of daily drivers needs. Move About, based in Norway, also benefit from natural resources that make electric vehicles more appealing. In Norway's case there is a significant over-capacity in hydro-electric power. This means that spare electricity is relatively cheap and so the costs of operating electric vehicles drop significantly. 

Fit between business model, ecosystem and environment is the key to success... 
One of my key take aways from this research is the importance of the fit between the business model, the ecosystem and the broader natural environment. Autolib' and Move About's relative success are a function of small and dense distances for travel - e.g. Paris and its immediate surroundings - coupled with cheap (or subsidised) and plentiful energy supply. Better Place failed because it didn't engage its ecosystem partners - it could not create the standard battery. TEPCO failed because of a natural disaster which diverted attention elsewhere. Without these interesting experiments and forays into new business models we'd never learn which worked best, but without alignment between the business model, the ecosystem and the broader environment, its clear that firms struggle to survive.

Innovating Your Service Business Model: The Capabilities to Succeed

One of the themes we have been exploring in the Cambridge Service Alliance is the question of how organisations best innovate their service business models. In some of our early work Ivanka Visnjic and I developed a framework of 12 capabilities that underpin successful service business model innovation. Since then we have been developing and iterating this framework, creating a maturity model that firms can used to assess the maturity of their capabilities for innovating their service business models. It seemed to me that it would a good idea to write a series of blogs on this framework and the twelve capabilities that underpin it - so here's the first one - explaining the framework.

In essence our research suggests there are four categories of capability that really matter when it comes to innovating the service business model. These are: (i) the ecosystem; (ii) the value proposition; (iii) the value delivery system and (iv) accountability spread. Let me explain these in turn.

The first set of capabilities are concerned with the ecosystem - increasingly competition is taking place at the level of the ecosystem, not the individual firm. In today's interconnected economy, what matters is the way the ecosystem is configured and how your firm is positioned to capture value from it. Apple and HP illustrate the point. If you ask the question - "of the $1,000 someone pays for an Apple or HP machine, who gets the money" - you find that Apple keep 60-70%, while HP keep only 30%. Why the difference? Because Apple use their own proprietary operating system (they don't cede money to Microsoft), they use their own chip (they don't cede money to Intel) and they have created their own distribution infrastructure (they don't cede money to the retailers).

So what can HP do? It is too late for them to develop their own operating system or get into chip manufacturing. Both technologies are too well established, with large incumbent players and high barriers to entry. The cost of establishing a retail infrastructure, certainly a high street retail infrastructure, is prohibitive. But what they can do is invest in Linux. If HP help Linux become a more dominant operating system then Linux reduces Microsoft's power in the marketplace and hence their ability to appropriate value, leaving more of the money on the table for HP. And in fact, it is in the interests of all of HP's traditional competitors to increase the power of Linux. So if HP collaborates with other laptop manufacturers, then collectively they can try to shape the ecosystem and their ability to capture value.

It is not just the ecosystem perspective that matters. The second theme that we saw in our research was the importance of innovating the value proposition - really understanding what the customer valued and the outcomes they were looking for. There's an old Theodore Levitt quote - "customers don't want quarter inch drills, they want quarter inch holes".  We don't think this is right. Customers don't even want quarter inch holes. When innovating your value proposition you have to understand why the customer wants the quarter inch hole. If it is to hang a picture, then how else might the picture be hung - you could glue it to the wall. You could invite an artist in to paint the picture on the wall. The key to innovating you value proposition is to understand deeply what your customers really value.

Beyond the value proposition, the third category of capabilities centred on the value delivery system. Here we are shifting into the question of how do we configure the resources and activities required to deliver the value proposition. What should we do? What should we ask others to do? Many of the services firms deliver today require networks of organisations to pool their capabilities. Understanding the right network structure and identifying the right partners is essential when innovating the service business model.

Finally, we shift to capabilities concerned with accountability spread. Here the idea is that by taking on responsibility for the outcomes your customers want - you increase your risk and exposure. By innovating the value delivery system - either through technology or partnering with others - you may decrease the control you have over the ecosystem. Hence you have increased your accountability, but potentially reduced your control - hence you may have increased your risk or accountability spread. Understanding the implications of this and how the risk will therefore be managed is paramount if the service business model is to be sustainable.

These four categories of capability - ecosystem, value proposition, value delivery system and accountability spread - form the highest level of our framework for understanding business model innovation. In future blogs I'll unpack each of these categories in turn and explain the capabilities that underpin them.

What is Servitization?

I've had a couple of occasions in the last week where I've used the word "servitization" - either in a presentation or an article and someone has responded by saying, "so what is servitization". Given the frequency of the question I thought it might be worth writing a short blog to explain what servitization is and where the idea came from.

In essence servitization is a transformation journey - it involves firms (often manufacturing firms) developing the capabilities they need to provide services and solutions that supplement their traditional product offerings. More formally, my colleagues and I at Cranfield University defined servitization as "the innovation of organisation’s capabilities and processes to better create mutual value through a shift from selling product to selling Product-Service Systems". Two other definitions accompany this: (i) the idea of a product-service system - "an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use" and (ii) a "servitized organisation which designs, builds and delivers an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use".

It is worth unpacking these definitions a little, but before I do, let me give a couple of practical examples of servitization. The first, and classic, example is Rolls-Royce selling "power-by-the-hour". Instead of selling aero engines, Rolls-Royce now contracts with many of its customers for "power-by-the-hour". In essence the customer buys the power the aero engine delivers and Rolls-Royce provides all of the support (including maintenance) to ensure that aero engines can continue to deliver power. This shift in business model is important because it means the interests of clients and providers are much more closely aligned. In the olden days Rolls-Royce used to make money on time and materials - basically repairing engines. Put crudely the worse the engines were, the more maintenance they required, so the more money Rolls-Royce would make. Of course customers don't want unreliable engines that are always in the repair shop. They want reliable products that - in Rolls-Royce's case - allow planes to fly safely.

This same trend - selling solutions rather than products - can be seen in lots of industries. In healthcare, for example, many pharmaceutical firms are under significant pressure. The cost of developing drugs is increasing, many of the traditional drugs are coming off patent and so the generic manufacturers can move into the market. As a consequence pharmaceutical firms are rethinking their business models - defining themselves as healthcare solutions providers. Think like a patient - most of us don't want the products that pharmaceutical firms provide. We'd prefer not to be ill in the first place. So if someone can provide healthcare solutions, which reduce the likelihood of illness, the interests of providers and customers are again much more closely aligned.

So let us return to the definitions. To make this transformation - to sell services and solutions - requires significant change inside many traditional manufacturers. They have to recognise that the product is a platform to deliver a service. They have to build solutions that deliver the outcomes their customers want and value. In essence these solutions are often capture in product-service systems, combinations of products and services. Customers only realise value from these when they actually receive the service - hence the concept of value in use.

Servitization as a word has been around since the late 1980s. The most frequently source article is cited as Vandermerwe, S., & Rada, J (1988) "Servitization of Business: Adding Value by Adding Services", European Management Journal, 6(4), 314–324. An article that appeared, but has only relatively recently been getting more attention in the broader academic literature and business press. A recent high-profile example, is UK Government's Foresight Report on the Future of Manufacturing - which identifies servitization as a core element in its vision for the future of manufacturing.


If you'd like to know more about servitization and my latest thinking on the topic why not join me for the Cambridge Service Design Programme: Making the Shift to Services - scheduled for 6-7th May. It would be a pleasure to see you there.

Struggling to make the shift to services? Write your own obituary!

It is clear that organisations across the globe are making the shift to solutions. Often the ultimate aspiration is providing the outcomes the customers (and in some some cases the customer's customers) want and need. Often this journey is described in terms of a service ladder - gradually moving from providing products to supporting the products with spares; through to remote or condition based monitoring; and finally onto contracting for capability or outcomes. While a logical flow and an inherently attractive proposition, successfully making this shift to solutions in reality is challenging. A critical issue is winning the hearts and minds of people who are used to a world of products. If you've always worked in a product or technology centred business then a commonly heard fear is "won't services cannibalise the product business" or put more directly "aren't we sowing the seeds of our own destruction - we'll kill the product business if we are too good at offering solutions".

Hearts and minds are always difficult to win, but one useful trick is to play on this fear. Recently we have been experimenting with asking organisation's to write their own obituary. The exam question we set is "write or record a short obituary for our services business. Imagine we are five years down the road and we haven't made our services business work (while all of our competitors have). What would the press be saying about us? What would they put our failure down to? Who would get the inheritance (e.g. which competitor gets our business and why)".

A simple trick, but the responses that are generated are both illuminating and in some cases humbling. Senior executives start to verbalise ideas like "ACME Inc has divested all of its remote and condition monitoring efforts and sold them to Monitoring-R-Us, a private company specialising in industrial solutions". Five themes consistently shine through these obituaries - the failure of the organisation concerned to keep pace with change; the inability to break away from the product-dominant culture; the need to get closer to customers and really understand their businesses; the reluctance to make the necessary investment - dabbling rather than committing to services and solutions; and missing the opportunity that the era of big data and sensors offers. In another blog I'll try to write more about these issues, but in the short-term if they strike a chord with you, join us in Cambridge on 1st October for the Cambridge Service Alliance conference - "Successfully Making the Shift to Solutions" - where we'll hear from organisations that are making the shift and overcoming the barriers. 

Beyond Servitization: What's Next?

I received an e-mail out of the blue from the leader of a company in Taiwan who asked the very thought provoking question "what is your prediction for the next revolutionary business model after the servitization of manufacturing". Rather than reply privately I thought I'd offer some public thoughts.

The first to say is that I don't think "servitization" is a business model - instead I see servitization as a transformation journey. Servitization is concerned with building the organisational capabilities and processes required to design, deliver and innovate high-performance product-service solutions. A business model is slightly different - it defines how you create and capture value through appropriate value propositions and delivery systems that operate within a broader ecosystem. A good business model also considers the risk or accountability spread that your organisation is exposed to through this combination of value proposition, value delivery system and ecosystem evolution.

Having said this, I understand the point behind the question, namely what business model options do manufacturing firms face post servitization? I'd break my answer to this question into two parts. First, I would think about the elements of the business model and ask what scope is there for change in terms of: (i) the value proposition; (ii) the value delivery system; (iii) accountability spread; and (iv) the ecosystem. Second, I'd think about whether there may be radically different business models at the aggregate level. The answer to the second question is relatively short, so I'll start with this one and simply say "I think its unlikely that we'll see radically different generic business models". Indeed one could argue that today's seemingly different business models are a rehash of old models. Take, for example, business that make money by attracting eyeballs and selling advertising - Google, Facebook, etc. Well TVs and newspapers have been doing that for years. The medium is different, but the base business model is the same.

So let me move to the more detailed level. Here I think we will see innovation - particularly in terms of the value delivery system; the accountability spread and the ecosystem. When it comes to value propositions I think most people understand the shift to outcomes - that organisations have to think clearly about what outcomes their customers really want and how they can then deliver these outcomes, rather than products or services. Where there's scope for innovation is in the value delivery system. Increasingly technology is playing a role in allowing organisations to innovate the way they configure the resources they use to deliver their products and services. Remote asset monitoring and diagnosis - using sensors and satellite infrastructure to monitor assets in the field and then diagnose potential maintenance requirements is becoming more widespread. In the education world, remotely monitoring student progress through online courses and intervening only when students seem to be going off track, allows schools and universities to focus teacher and faculty time on those students who most need support. Remote health monitoring technologies are revolutionising medicine and healthcare. Wearable devices can monitor the vital signs of individual patients letting doctors and hospitals intervene only when necessary. In essence the first wave of business model innovation we are seeing concerns  innovations in the value delivery system - looking for new ways of combining and configuring resources to ensure value is delivered to customers as efficiently as possible.

The second theme we'll see is a greater understanding of the risk and associated accountability spread. As organisations innovate their business models and take responsibility for outcomes they also take on risk. As they innovate their value delivery systems, often partnering with others, they reduce their own level of control. Both of these activities increase the risk or exposure of the contracting organisation. Too often today organisations cope with this increased risk and exposure by increasing their prices (and hence safety margins). Technology will help organisations get a better handle on the risks they really face and how these risks can be mitigated and as a consequence we'll get more sophisticated about how we price risk.

The third and final theme we'll see is greater innovation at the level of the ecosystem. Competition won't solely focus on your direct competitors. Instead firms will explore what role they should play in the broader ecosystem and how they can shape the ecosystem. Apple is one of my favourite examples here. By opening up the technology required to develop apps, Apple has encouraged a community of apps developers. If you have a large community of apps developers then you get lots of cheap apps - the individual apps end up competing on price as there's always a similar app to yours on offer. So the hardware - the iPad, iPod and Mac - becomes more valuable because it is the route to access lots of cheap Apps. When it comes to business model innovation we'll see more and more firms thinking this way - how do we shape the ecosystem to help us better create and capture value.

So back to the original question - "what is your prediction for the next revolutionary business model after the servitization of manufacturing". The short answer is that I don't believe we'll see radically new business models, but I do think we'll see radical innovations in the elements that make up business models - particularly in terms of the the value delivery systems, the accountability spread and the broader ecosystem.

Why Servitize: Alternative Rationales

I have often thought about the reasons why firms servitize (sell services as well as products). Usually I categorise these under three broad headings - economic, strategic and environmental. The economic reasons for servitization include:

1. The challenge of competing on cost - in many developed countries firms find it difficult, if not impossible, to compete on cost alone. The reality is that their underlying costs bases are too high in comparison to lower cost economies and so they have to compete through innovation and differentiation - services valued by customers are one route of differentiation.

2. The installed base argument - in capital goods industries, where products have long-life cycles, the installed base can be significant. In 2010, for example, Boeing had 19,410 commercial planes in operation and delivered 462 new planes, giving a ratio of 42 operational planes for every new plane delivered. Providing service and support for the installed base is a significant market opportunity.

3. Stability of revenues - particularly important in recent years, in many capital goods industries product revenues can be lumpy. Significant revenue is gained when products are sold and delivered, but this doesn't happen every day. Ongoing service and support revenues provide a more stable income stream, smoothing the effect of lumpy product sale revenues.

In strategic terms there are four key reasons for servitization.

1. Locking in customers - a traditional business model that has been used for years. Products are sold at or slightly above cost, money is made on the provision of spares and consumables. Think razors and razor blades; printers and ink cartridges.

2. Locking out competitors - especially important in industries with a high installed base. As demand for high margin service and support grows, new entrants are attracted to the services market. Many original equipment manufacturers make strategic moves to partner with their customers and in doing so seek to lock out potential new entrants to the services market.

3. Increasing differentiation - some customers value the stability that service and support contracts offer. A fixed price can mean predictable maintenance costs and a transfer of risk from the customer to the service provider. These benefits provide a differentiation advantage to original equipment manufacturers.

4. Customer demand - the final strategic reason I often talk about is customer demand, in the sense that customers demand that their providers offer service based contracts. In public procurement, particularly the defence sector, this is becoming an increasingly important trend. Government Departments are asking to contract for capability, by the right to use the assets (ships, ground vehicles and planes), rather than taking ownership of the assets.

A final, and potentially increasingly important, rationale for servitization is the environmental rationale. Here the idea is to question whether transfer of asset ownership is neccessary. Think of car sharing schemes, such as StreetCar and ZipCar, or DVD sharing schemes, such as Netflicks. Do consumers really need to take physical ownership of assets or can we share access to them, thereby reducing the environmental impact of production.


While these three rationales have stood the test of time, the reasons for this blog is I came across a new strategic rationale at a recent conference - the idea of service as a pre-sale opportunity. Volvo Cars run an active programme with their dealers where they seek to persuade them that every service encounter is also an opportunity to build customer loyalty and hence secure a repeat purchase - hence service as a pre-sale. The data that Volvo presented are illuminating. They clearly show that, at least for Volvo Cars, repeat business is a function both of product quality and service quality. How many of your service staff see service as a pre-sale opportunity?

Andy Neely

Director, Cambridge Service Alliance

The Challenges of Selling Services During a Global Recession

A global recession need not mean firms have to contract.  Instead, they might like to consider what we at the Cambridge Service Alliance call ‘the challenges of selling services’. We know that in a global recession there is more demand for firms to be innovative. People are asking themselves: ‘How do we deliver the outcomes we want?’ They are not just going to continue carrying on with business as usual.  What we advise firms to do is to ask the question: ‘What is the outcome the client is trying to achieve and how can we innovate the service delivery model to achieve that outcome?’

The shift to services is about the tendency of firms not just to sell products, but instead to sell outcomes - the outcomes that are related to services. For instance, a train manufacturer might in the past have sold trains, and then decided to provide the through life service to look after that train for its entirelife.  But today they are now going further.  They are saying that customers don’t even need to buy the train, as they will guarantee the availability of the train. They will maintain it and they will look after its upkeep, so that customers can just use the train. Ultimately customers often don’t want to own products, they want the service the product delivers for them.

There is little doubt that the shift to services does open up the market place; it creates new opportunities to grow revenue. But we do understand that it’s also not a straightforward change for firms - some of the changes are around changing mind-sets, and changing the culture inside the organisation, particularly for manufacturing firms. If you have been really good at making products and then you decide to move into servicing products as well, throughout their life, then clearly you are going to need people with different skill sets. You will need closer relationships with customers. You will have to help the organisation evolve and start to change the culture so that your firm becomes much more service oriented.

We have devised a seven-point scale of ‘challenges for sales’, leading in turn to seven ‘opportunities for sales’. These are: ‘appetite’, ‘outcomes’, ‘delivering what you sell’, ‘identifying and managing risk’, ‘sealing the deal’, ‘killing your business’ and ‘the hidden service’.

‘Appetite’ is about making sure your customers pull for your services, and that the demand is in the market, making it a pull rather than a push sale. In terms of ‘outcomes’, it is all about being really clear what it is the customer wants to buy.  It’s not the product – for example it’s not the drill or even the quarter inch hole, but it is about the ability to hang the picture.  It is also about building your capabilities, which is what Vestas has done with its business model. Vestas are no longer just selling wind turbines, instead they are now advising customers where to put them, utilising their knowledge of wind flows around the World, finding much more effective solutions for its customers.  This is how ‘delivering what you sell’ becomes essential.

You need to ‘manage the risk’ in the short and long term so that you really understand the dynamics of the risk.  What risk are you taking on, and so therefore how do you price the risk? You need to ‘seal the deal’ to avoid giving away the service and this means ensuring the customer really understands the value in the service. Then you have to ensure complementarity, so that you don’t ‘kill the business’, ensuring that both product and sales work together. Finally, ‘the hidden service’ is about putting the ‘sizzle’ in the service. Where are you going to draw a line of visibility and what are you going to make visible to your customers so they understand the value of your service? 

For instance, a restaurant like Benihana cooks the meal at the table, so that you see the chef tossing ingredients around, like a theatre show they make a real experience for you. We have to help customers understand what is going on behind the scenes, so they can see the value of the service they are buying. Another example is Rolls Royce, who take their customers into their controlcentres, and the customers see what they are buying when they sign the service contract. It allows customers to see what they are paying for and what the ‘sizzle’ behind the service is.

The thing that people find most difficult is to change the mind-set of an organisation.  You need to get your sales teams to recognise the value of the service, focus on the outcomes and then to make sure the customer actually understands the value of the service, and is therefore willing to pay an appropriate price for it. Customers also need to understand the risk transfer that is taking place and that this is priced into the deal – to appreciate the value of the entire package.

At the Cambridge Service Alliance we can try to help prevent mistakes being made in this shift to services, by turning those seven challenges into seven opportunities. We find that the issues firms face are often about complementarities. For example, if there are two separate business units, one for services, one for products and they just look after themselves then it’s not as good as if they can be encouraged to work together and make both of them ‘hum’. I want the product part to design for service, and I want the service part to go back to the product part of the business and give them new opportunities to sell additional products.

By making this shift to services product based firms can take advantage of theopportunities that present themselves even in a global downturn like today. In a difficult market there is an appetite for change, there is an appetite for saying - ‘We can’t carry on delivering things as we have done in the past’.  For instance, public policy makers may be scratching their heads and admitting: ‘We can’t deliver healthcare and education as we have done in the past, we can’t afford to’. There is a need for the service delivery model to change and that is where the innovation comes.

Listen to Podcast on "The Challenges of Selling Services" by Professor Andy Neely

Beyond Co-Creation: Think About Co-Evolution

In the world of service many people talk about the co-creation of value - the idea that customers and providers work together to create value in service. Take, for example, a restaurant. As a patron you and your companions (assuming you are not eating alone) help create the experience. You engage in conversation. You banter with the waiters. You compare and often share your food. In a more complex business-to-business setting, the provider of the service is often dependent on customer inputs. When maintaining complex engineered equipment, for example, customer feedback - what's working, what's not - is an essential input to the maintenance diagnosis process.

I have spent the last couple of days at the launch meeting of the NEMODE - New Economic Models in the Digital Economy - network. One of the most interesting themes to emerge for me was the idea of the co-evolution of business models, rather than the co-creation of value. An apposite example is provided by eBay. When eBay was first launched it was created as a market place for selling cheap, second-hand goods. The idea was that you could go to your garage, find an old set of tools, put them on eBay - a form of electronic car boot sale - and sell them, rather than trash them.

Over the years eBay has evolved - it has become a virtual market place. People use it to sell everything - from second hand garage items to new cars. Some use eBay as virtual store, selling their goods online. What has happened over the years is the users of eBay have found ways of using the platform that were never originally envisaged. As the users have innovated their use of the platform, eBay has responded and innovated its business model.

Co-evolution doesn't rest there - it is not just the interaction of customers and providers. You also have to consider the broader eco-system. Take, for example, Apple. Through the Apps store and through Apps themselves, Apple have created a platform that allows others to offer services (Apps) to customers. The three parties involved - Apps developers, Apple and the customers - are jointly co-evolving the business model. This raises an interesting question - how good are you are co-evolving your business model with your customers? Have you created a platform that allows the customers to find new ways of creating value? And if so, are you capable of spotting these customer innovations and incorporating them into your business model to allow the next round of co-evolution?