The Key to Servitization is Effective Collaboration

Companies who are considering Servitization or Services Transformation as part of a key growth strategy have a lot of different aspects to consider depending on how they wish to tackle this challenge but one area in particular is worth looking at in some detail – i.e. their internal communication or collaboration.

Services is about people and it is a well known fact that businesses which depend on people and people skills will perform much better when there is an effective system of communication in place. Introducing change in an organisation which already has effective internal collaboration is also a much easier task and the companies who have been most successful at introducing and growing services have excelled in this aspect.

From portfolio planning and development through to sales/marketing and delivery, services touches almost all parts of an organisation supported by the key administrative business functions such as HR & Finance. Having an effective system of communication and collaboration in place will facilitate an ongoing evolution in the development of the services business and ensure that all participating functions within the organisation are engaged and have more visibility of each others contribution & impact on the business.

Capturing customer “pain points” and feeding these into the portfolio roadmap, understanding the value proposition, pricing and quantifiable impact of a service are all examples of elements which cannot be handled in isolation within a specific function in an organisation, but which should be worked in collaboration, maximizing the pockets of subject-matter expertise available within the company, and providing cross-visibility at all stages which increases the overall services competency of the business.

Some businesses still rely on the traditional email for internal communication of this nature but the benefits of using more context-based tools such as dedicated business portals, Wikis, Blogs, Discussion Forums, online Chatrooms etc are proving worthwhile especially for services businesses where staff are often located remotely or spread across multiple different geographic locations.

Services is all about people and facilitating effective people-communication will help create a more effective services business.

John