Analysis of the business game

The business game was started with total of fourteen service proposals that were pre-sented as a game playing card. Out of those fourteen proposals twelve got allocated during at least one round of the business game. These twelve service proposals were:

A, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, K, and the Joker. More precise information of each of these services is presented in the appendix B which is confidential information and will not be publicly available. The full business game is presented in the appendix C which is also confidential information.

The twelve service proposals that got allocated during the business game can be di-vided in to three categories based on the nature of the service.

1. The first category is services that can be offered through digital platform. The concept of these services is designed in a way that the service does not require physical presence, tangible goods or other aspects that would limit the possibil-ity of providing the service through digital platform.

2. The second category is services that are based on a software solution. The concept of these services is that providing them can be done through innovating software designing. The benefit of such services is the customizability. The basic offering can be still available, but an optional service can be activated without excessive labour.

3. The third category is services that require noticeable efforts from the case com-pany. Eighter through investments to resources such as labour and equipment

or through major changes to the current business model. The services found from the third category are 6, 10, J, Joker.

Based on these three different categories the needed actions differentiate from each other. The services that are found from the category one are: A, 2, 5, 10, K. These ser-vices require mainly operations to find or design a suitable digital platform that would be sufficient for the service. The major change to the current business model would be an added cost and revenue which both would most likely be monthly subscriptions. The current structure of the organization is suitable for offering such digital services. What needs to be considered from the organization’s perspective is naming the manager for each of the digital services. This does not require any hierarchical changes to the or-ganization.

The services found from the second category are: 7, 8, 9. These services require mainly resources for the software development. This can be done by eighter prioritizing current project and allocating existing resources or investing to additional resources.

Some of the category two services might have a possibility to utilize outsourcing due to the general nature of the software. The final development which would connect this general software to a product specific environment could be done in-house. Important aspect for these software services is to make strategic decision how the revenue is generated.

The services found from the third category are 4, 6, J, Joker. Since these services re-quire the most effort from the case company, it is critical to first evaluate the needed scale of each of these services based on the estimated market demand. By doing so, the needed actions can be prioritized, and the investments can be divided over time.

Important aspect of each of these services is the need for additional resources and clear manager for the service. Therefore, the structure of the organization would need re-modelling for these services. Some level of hierarchy is required to make these ser-vices effective, since these serser-vices require project management and clear communi-cation. These services require also re-modelling of the business model, since in each of these services, customer is one of the key resources unlike in the current business model of the case company. Besides that, the revenue and cost structure would most likely be altered as well.

Since the nature of the services and needed actions wary from one service to another, the plan of action is beneficial to be divided into short term (1-2 years) and long term (2-5 years) plans.

Short term plan to accomplish the services would be as follows:

- Estimate the urgency of the services from categories one and two.

- Create a rough project plan for the services based on the order of urgency.

- Based on the project plan, estimate the needed resources to accomplish the service.

- Design suitable revenue model for each of the services and adjust the business model accordingly.

- Maximise the use of digitization in the services to increase compatibility with current resources.

Long term plan to accomplish the services would be as follows:

- Do a market research and estimate the level of need for services found from category three.

- According to the market research, estimate the need of resources in terms of equipment, employees, and stakeholders to accomplish the service.

- Estimate the urgency of the services.

- Create a project plan to commercialize the services in the order of urgency.

- Re-modelling the structure of the organization to be suitable for project busi-ness and customer-oriented value offering.

- Redesigning the business model, in a way that takes the customer relationship into the center of the business model, since the services found from the cate-gory 3 require deep understanding of customers business which is only possi-ble through strong relationship.