Analysis of the interviews

The purpose of the interviews was to get more detailed data about 1. Internal

knowledge of the case company, 2. Current service offering of the case company, 3.

Current business model and structure of the organization. Based on this data the cur-rent positioning on the goods-to-service continuum could be estimated and the possibil-ities of altering this position could be recognized.

Based on the findings of the interviews the current offering of the case company con-sists of basic and intermediate services that are designed to support the main product that the case company offers to their customers. The current service portfolio is as fol-lows:

Basic services

- Warranty: The case company offers warranty for their main product and sup-portive products according to the laws and legislation of each country and re-gion where the products are delivered.

- Spare parts: The case company offers a full catalogue of spare parts which are categorized according to the importance of the part for the functionality of the main product. The spare parts are delivered to the customers directly or through the distributors.

- Basic tools and consumables: The case company offers basic tool and consum-ables with the main product when it is being delivered. By doing so the case company ensures smooth operations for the end user through necessities.

Intermediate services

- Technical support: The case company offers technical support to the end users eighter directly or through trained distributors. With the technical support the

downtime of the main product is being minimized and the sales of spare parts are being supported.

- Deployment and user training: The case company offers deployment of the main product and basic user training eighter directly or through the trained dis-tributors to ensure that the main product has been delivered without damages and that the main product functions as it should. Besides that, the user training ensures smooth ramp up of the production.

- Yearly maintenance: The case company offers yearly maintenance of the main product eighter directly or through trained partners. The yearly maintenance is done as a preventive maintenance, and it follows maintenance program de-signed for the main product. With this service, the downtime and lifespan of the main product is being optimized.

- Warranty extensions: The case company offers warranty extensions to the main products basic warranty. To ensure that the main product stays in a condition that is reasonable to be covered by the warranty, the yearly maintenance ser-vice is being buddled with the warranty extension serser-vice. With this serser-vice the life cycle expenses of the main product can be estimated in advance.

- Software service: The case company offers process monitoring software as a supportive service for the main product. With it the end user can verify the qual-ity of manufacturing and create qualqual-ity reports about produced parts.

The current service offering consists mainly of life-cycle services for the main product.

The exception for this is deployment and user training, since they provide information for the customer and can be therefore, seen as process support service. Still the whole service portfolio can be categorized as an input service offering as highlighted in the figure 15 below. (Coreynen et al. 2017).

Figure 15. Section of servitization pyramid, adapted from (Coreynen et al. 2017).

To be able to answer to the research questions the current positioning of the case com-pany needs to be defined. Based on the categorization done using the servitization pyr-amid highlighted in figure 15, the current positioning of the case company on the

goods-to-services continuum can be estimated. Currently the case company is heavily relying on the product-based business model but can be still considered to be on the early stages of servitization. This statement can be supported by going through the cur-rent service offering and reflecting it to the service matrix presented by Kowalkowski et al. (2011). The current offering of the case company can be positioned on the product-oriented services that are unbundled, which can be seen as the earliest stage of serviti-zation. This is highlighted in the figure 16 below.

Figure 16. Section of the service matrix, adapted from (Kowalkowski et al. 2011).

Based on the analysis done using the tools from Coreynen et al. (2017). and Kowalk-owski et al. (2011). the positioning of the current service offering of the case company on the goods-to-services continuum can be proposed to be on the far left and the ser-vices can be seen as addons, as highlighted in the figure 17 below. The estimated tar-get position of the service offering is created based on the reflection of interview results to the theoretical background of this thesis. Since the case company is SME and com-petes against big corporations, the level of servitization plays important role on the competitiveness with limited resources. But since, the company is profiled to be an OEM the offering still needs to have strong ties to the tangible goods as well. There-fore, the estimated target position of the service offering has been placed on the middle of the goods-to-services continuum.

Figure 17. Case company positioning of the goods-to-services continuum, adapted from (Oliva & Kallenberg, 2003).

The positioning of the estimated target position shown in the figure 17 can be also re-flected through the Kowalkowski et al. (2011). service matrix. The services that the case company should be focused to achieve this target level of servitization can be highlighted as process oriented unbundled services and some bundled services. Exam-ple of such target service categories is presented in figure 18 below. The main target service group is highlighted with green box.

Figure 18. Service matrix, adapted from (Kowalkowski et al. 2011).

Other way to identify the future services is to reflect it with the model presented by Coreynen et al. (2017). in their servitization pyramid. To make the target level of serviti-zation achievable the case company needs to focus on services that are on the second level of the servitization pyramid and effect on the overall performance. Such services can be for example preventive maintenance and part production service. The overall picture is presented in the figure 19 below.

Figure 19. Second level of servitization pyramid, adapted from (Coreynen et al. 2017).

The internal knowhow of the case company

Based on the findings of the interviews the key knowhow of the case company is built around the manufacturing process their main product utilizes. This means that the case company has knowledge on the physics behind the manufacturing process, knowledge about the material science that is being utilized in the process as well as the mechani-cal, electronical and software engineering knowledge required to make the manufactur-ing process possible. Besides the key knowhow and supportive knowledge, the find-ings of the interviews highlight that the case company obtains knowledge of how their customers could benefit from their technology and add value to their processes by uti-lizing the main product of the case company. This can be supported by the capabilities of knowledge sharing that the case company also has according to the interviews.

The sub research question 1 of the thesis was: How the internal knowledge of the case company can be transferred into productive service sold through resellers network. The internal knowledge had to be first recognized which was done through these interviews.

Based on the finding the researcher then created proposals for potential services that could be offered according to the findings of the internal knowledge. These proposals were presented as a service card that had introduction to the service on one side and needed actions on the other side. These cards were utilized in the business game, so that the potential proposals could be recognized and moved forward. The full list of the proposed services is classified information and is therefore, presented on the appendix 2 which is not publicly available. An example of such service proposal is presented in the figure 20 below.

Figure 20. Example of the service proposals that were presented to the executives of the case company

In total 14 proposals were made by the researcher that were later utilized in the busi-ness game. Those proposals were based on the results and analysis of the interviews.

More specific, on the knowhow that was presented by the interviewees. These pro-posals were presented as a concept of a potential service and therefore, the require-ments are opinions of the researcher and estimations of how much work is required to make such service possible. One common aspect of these service proposals which makes them possible to be offered through global distributor network is the utilization of digitization. This can be seen as an advantage for the case company since Coreynen et al. (2017). highlighted in their paper that SMEs benefit the most from services that can be digitized and therefore, offered with minimal need of resources. The deeper analysis of the requirements and the final form of a service can be done once the ser-vices have been approved by the executives of the case company.