Exploring the journey to services

Abstract

Firms are increasingly providing services to complement their product offerings. The vast majority of studies on the service journey, also known as servitization or service transition, examine the challenges and enablers of the process of change through cases studies. Investigations that provide an indepth longitudinal analysis of the steps involved in the service journey are much rarer. Such a detailed understanding is required in order to appreciate fully how firms can leverage the enablers while overcoming the challenges of servitization. This study investigates what does a service journey look like? It analyzes in some detail the actual service journeys undertaken by three firms in the well-being, engineering and learning sectors. The paper offers four contributions. First, in the change literature, there are two dominant theories: The punctuated equilibrium model and the continuous change model. This study demonstrates that servitization follows a continuous change rather than a punctuated equilibrium. It shows that such continuous change is neither logical nor structured but much more emergent and intuitive in nature. Second, the study provides empirical evidence to support a contingency view of the dominance and sequencing of the different process models of change across the change journey. Third, this research shows the pace of service development and when the coexistence of basic, intermediate and complex services occurs. Finally, it contributes to the literature in the service field by presenting three actual service journeys and the associated seven stages of the service strategy model that organizations should consider when managing their service journeys. 1. Introduction Manufacturing firms have increasingly diversified into services (Raddats, Baines, Burton, Story and Zolkiewski, 2016). Globally, over a third of large manufacturing firms offer services, with two out of three in developed countries doing so (

PSS Strategic Alignment: Linking Service Transition Strategy with PSS Business Model

“…In particular, attention was given to the relevant contributions on elements corresponding to strategic alignment, which may not make any specific reference to the strategic alignment approach. For example, these could be articles addressing service strategy model which also emphasize the connection between strategic level and operational level within the company [35][36][37]. Moreover, the articles which have specifically adopted a business model perspective to discuss the service transition were also included, as a business model is a reflection of a company's changes (structure, culture, and competencies) affected by the shift towards delivering PSS [26].…”

“…The first stream believes in the notion that transition happens in the incremental product-to-service continuum [14,[58][59][60], where the manufacturer gradually adds the service aspect in their offering and the organizational change is adjusted to support the attempt [58]. On the contrary, service transition is also regarded as a continuous process which is intuitive and emergent in nature, instead of a structured process following a specific continuum [36,61]. The journeys of the manufacturers towards service transition can be logically divergent among each other considering each company's specific context [62].…”

“…The journeys of the manufacturers towards service transition can be logically divergent among each other considering each company's specific context [62]. In spite of different perspectives existing as to how the transition emerges, there is a broad consensus among PSS researchers that the adaptation of strategic management theories is beneficial to foster the maturity of the PSS research field [11,36,37,[63][64][65]. This paper shares the same belief on that premise and attempts to further contribute to the maturity of the PSS research field by exploring strategic alignment indispensable for a PSS company.…”

“…Following the original concept of strategic alignment in the strategic management area, researchers in PSS indicated two dimensions of strategic alignment, namely internal alignment [15][16][17][22][23][24][25][26][27]35,37,67,70] and external alignment [30,31,68,71]. Not only treated as separate concepts, internal and external alignment were also underlined by several PSS researchers as an inseparable integration [13,36,66,69,72]. The result of the literature review in the strategic management area suggests that the element of organization necessary to be aligned is varied depending on the scope of analysis [18,21].…”

“…Internal Alignment [15][16][17][22][23][24][25][26][27]35,37,67,70] Alignment in service business development, i.e., strategic intension, business logic, value constellation [70] Business model development and capabilities development [67] Consistency among strategic logics [37] Strategy and business model [15][16][17]22,23,[25][26][27]35] Strategy and company's resource [24] External Alignment [30,31,68,71] Business model and environmental aspects (legal, technological and economical) [71] Internal dimension (PSS business model) and service network (partner) [30] Internal dimension and customer [68] Five aspects of a PSS project including goal, vision, practice, understanding, culture and bargaining power between PSS company and customer [31] Internal and External Alignment [13,36,66,69,72] Internal alignment: strategy and organization structure; External alignment: internal dimension and business partners [66] Internal alignment: strategic orientation, service portfolio, and organization arrangement; External alignment: internal dimensions, service network, and customer…”