As pointed out few times in the previous chapters, customers’ increasing demands have an effect on the birth of the digital platform among the case companies. A big theme that emerged
during the data analysis process was, that both of the companies have emphasized the role of customer interaction during the process of integrating digital platform business into existing operations. This has been brought up when discussing about external environment and its effect on developing a digital platform business, but also when discussing for example of processes and how development is now done together with customers. Customer interaction can be seen to be divided in different parts, which are customer orientation, customer expectations, co-creation, solving customers’ problems and creating customer value. I will now elaborate on these topics and provide more reasoning for them.
Customer orientation
Customer orientation and taking a customer-oriented approach to developing products and services are mentioned by all of the interviewees. The companies are responding to customer needs and are actively seeking what customers want. They put emphasis on customers’ business and try to find ways to enhance the efficiency of their operations. One interviewee pointed out that the thinking of platform emerged after carrying out a wide research focusing on understanding the customer:
“We started a customer understanding research, in which we openly investigated on a large scale, that how we could serve the customers better.”
In the other case, interviewee describes what was required to find out customer needs:
“I sat there a day trying to understand their (customer’s) business problem, what we want to solve.”
The aim for the companies is to serve the customers better and enable better business performance as one interviewee describes:
“It increases, again, our own business performance and our customers' business performance.”
The customer-oriented approach influenced also the way of working and how the case companies develop their internal processes. With this development process it was not possible
to do it completely internally, but to apply tools and methods, which allows customer orientation. One interviewee states that:
“We started to think the matter from the customer point of view and their problems, and how to solve them using lean start-up.”
Changing customer expectations
When talking about external environment influencing the creation of a digital platform, all of the interviewees point out that the customer expectations have changed. Due to the shift in expectations, companies have had to use their capabilities to find out how they have been changed, and how they can actually change themselves to sustain the customer relationships.
The customers expect more from services, but they also require due to the change in B2C technological advancements. The technology that is used in personal life has an effect on the expectations and requirements people are presenting in business environment. Multiple interviewees describe this:
“Customers expect more and more services.”
“Customers have started to actually require.”
“They (customers) want smart solutions.”
People in their business role today expect digital customer experience which compares to consumer experience. And consumer services, digital services, have taken huge development steps.”
“People's assumption is that services that are offered are modern, easy to use, easy to learn and nice looking.”
Companies either proactively seek to find information on changing customer needs or they have been able to notice the opportunities in the everyday communication with their customers. It is also mentioned in both of the cases that customers do not actually call for a digital platform, but it has been the end result on how customer expectations can be fulfilled. Most likely, the
customer comes forward with a problem, in the end it can be solved by offering a platform. One interviewee who has been tightly involved in solving customers’ problems with platform state:
“All the customers might not know how to vocalize it, customers rarely come and say that we want this elevator, which is a platform.”
Co-creation with customers
Co-creation with customer was pointed out as a tool to build cases around the future digital platform and a way to verify how the platform should look like and serve the customers. The development style and methods differ from previous projects in both of the cases and it will be described more precisely in chapter 4.3. Nevertheless, it is important to note here, that the development process itself brought together the customers and the case companies. The process was not anymore internal, but the customer was in the focus before, during and after the development process. Before the process, the need derived from customers as described above, and as one interviewee says:
“First, we contacted multiple customers and interviewed them based on the problems they have with existing systems and investigated what are their needs, and how they would want the service to work for them.”
In the development phase, co-creation is one option and building a test group can also be beneficial for the development. The development with a digital platform is an on-going process.
Interviewees describe involving the customer as follows:
“Services can be developed together with the customer, in co-creation style.”
“In this, it was really important we could have the end users with us when doing, and so to verify the direction we are going. Based on the feedback.”
The aftermath and on-going development include the customers as well. When customer give feedback and suggestions on how to develop the platform even further. The customer feedback should be the foundation of how the platform will be further developed. An interviewee with experience in customer experience states that:
“Actually, the fun starts when you take that service to real customers for the first time. Then, naturally real start to improve and develop it.”
“5 million euros for the next year and then how you spend it is determined by the what is needed based on the customer feedback and the continuous development of the digital service. Not what is measured through the normal KPIs or the normal finance processes.”
Solving customers’ problems
As it has been mentioned, creating a digital platform is not result of a pure internal decision.
The need for a digital platform derives from solving customers’ problems and strategic objectives. One interviewee describes the process of finding pain points, which can be solved by creating a platform:
“They (customers) will come and say that we have this robot, which should interact with this elevator.”
“I want this data from the elevator to my maintenance system.”
Then, building a platform enables case companies to further assess their business and the ability to serve the customer even better. Interviewees describe this by stating that:
“Now we can think on a bigger scale what are all the problems the customer has.”
”It didn’t originate in a way, which also happens, that hey let’s make a platform. So, it didn’t actually originate from that, rather it started by reasoning and then we realized that this is a platform or an opportunity for it.”
Improving customer experience
The foundation of the digital platform is creating customer value. The development of a platform is a result of reconfiguring the business model i.e. how company creates value and how company does business based on system perspective. The customer experience is in the center of the development regardless of platform type, focus being either on consumer or
business, or whether the platform considers customers or end-users. The aim is to ensure the best possible customer experience, which will respond to customer needs. The interviewees state that:
“Services need to be developed from the customer-oriented approach and to think what creates value to the customer.”
“This is a huge project dedicated to increase customer satisfaction in a way. So, we want to serve our customer better.”
“For instance, how do we offer our customers or the users of their equipment or people moving through their parts of the urban environment, how do we offer even better people flow experience first to those people.”
The first emerging theme, customer interaction, is partly providing answers to RQ1: What resources and capabilities are needed to integrate digital platform business into firm’s existing operations? and RQ3: How does a successful integration enhance the firm’s competitiveness through building of new value creation opportunities? In both of the cases, customer data and customer relationships are seen as important resources in the process of integrating digital platform business. All of the interviewees stated that most of the resources needed are intangible. On the other hand, the resource, in this case customer knowledge, is not enough.
The case companies need also capabilities to clarify customer needs, which might propose new opportunities, to reform the customer needs into concrete actions to take forward and to change the way they operate based on the proposed opportunity. Customer interaction has several findings related to enhanced competitiveness. The digital platform is strongly connected to services and increasing the level of service. Both of the case companies aim to solve customers’
pain points and offer solutions i.e. increase the customer value as well as enhance the customer experience. The digital platform is created from the customer’s perspective, involving customers and through building of business cases. The verification of enhancing customer value is in the heart of the process, thus the company becomes more competitive if the customers agree on the value they receive. To conclude, companies can create competitive advantage through building of digital platform business if they know their customers and are able to respond to their needs and requirements by offering more value than the competition.