Open Access

This chapter addresses the market launch and sales of smart services. It opens with an introduction of the new challenges that the market launch of smart services creates for companies. Then follows the discussion of a four-phase approach to the market launch of smart services. Subsequently, successful practices are presented for this approach along eight design fields of the market launch. [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-58182-4_8]

Subscription business models provide an important component for monetizing the potential of Industrie 4.0. Subscription business is based on a long-term and participative business relationship between customer and provider. However, only digitalization offers the necessary framework conditions to realize the characteristic recurring and performance-based billing, and to ensure the necessary transparency about the usage phase of products as well as continuous performance improvements in the customer process. Against this background, companies must not only recognize the much-cited potential that lies in the total dedication to the success of individual subscription customers. Rather, the central obstacles must be addressed, examined, and subsequently overcome in a targeted manner in order to successfully establish subscription business models and place them on the market.

A subscription business model - that sounds like significant economic advantages. Therefore, the question arises: Why haven't all manufacturing companies established this type of participative business model yet? The answer: The development and implementation of subscription business models go hand in hand with central challenges that companies have to overcome in the course of a business model transformation. This expert paper helps with this.

Durch die Digitalisierung werden die vertriebenen Leistungen und somit auch die Aufgaben für die Vertriebs- und Servicemitarbeiter komplexer. Zunehmend werden Produkte, Dienstleistungen und Software nicht mehr isoliert, sondern als integrierte Leistung-as-a-Service angeboten. Dieser Wandel betrifft das gesamte Unternehmen und die Art und Weise wie das Unternehmen agiert und hat großen Einfluss auf die Vertriebsorganisation. Der Kunde und dessen Nutzen rückt immer stärker in den Fokus der Aktivitäten von Unternehmen und sowohl Kundenkontakt als auch langfristige Kundenbindung werden zu einem zentralen Wettbewerbsfaktor.

Industrial service providers deliver complex technical services (e.g. inspection, maintenance, repair, improvement, installation and turnarounds) for a wide range of technical assets in process industries such as the chemical industry. Due to the versatility of assets and industries, there is also a variety of the corresponding service offerings. The demand for a high service quality and the general cost pressure leads to the need of a more efficient and standardized design of the service processes. However, cost-benefit ratio related decisions regarding the questions where and how service processes should be standardized entail great challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises. This is because there is often a lack of understanding of cost savings through process standardization, which is caused by a lack of understanding of the correlations between process characteristics and process target values. Because of this, the goal of this paper is to develop a method for a quantitative evaluation of the cost-benefit ratio of process standardization measures. Within this method, the relevant service performance processes are selected first. Next, the process data will be recorded with the help of questionnaires. These are then analyzed by looking for correlations between the process characteristics and the process target values. Afterwards standardization measures are derived on the basis of these findings in order to improve deficit characteristics and thus target values. Finally, the method´s practical applicability is tested and validated by applying it to an industrial service in the chemical industry.