Using the industrial service offering to promote service business growth
Hautamäki, Kaisa (2016)
2016
Tuotantotalouden koulutusohjelma
Talouden ja rakentamisen tiedekunta - Faculty of Business and Built Environment
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2016-08-17
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201608034379
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201608034379
Tiivistelmä
The previous studies on service business development have focused mainly on, how an industrial company can achieve service business growth through offering new services. Meanwhile in the current literature, there have been a very limited amount of research on service business development using company’s current service offering. The focus of this research was in service business development of manufacturing companies using the companies’ current service offering. The study was conducted in order to support a manufacturing company’s service business growth efforts. The objective of this study was to find, how a company can utilize its current service offering in an industrial environment to achieve service business growth.
The research was conducted as a qualitative single case study. The case company of this research was a large company, which operated globally in automation industry. In the basis of the literature review, a core knowledge of service business development was established. The primary data was collected from 21 semi-structured interviews. 18 of these interviews were conducted in Finland and three in the United Kingdom. Additionally, secondary data from the case company’s internal databases, external market analyses and the case company’s competitors’ annual reports were used to enhance the validity of the research and to analyze the case company’s business environment. Informal discussions were also used in this research to validate the research results.
As a result of the study, a personalized service business development process was developed for the case company to analyze its current services’ service business growth opportunities. The research also revealed four key prerequisites to service business development. These were ability and tools to sell and deliver services as well as communication and managerial commitment. Additionally, the research identified and developed understanding on key success factors, indicators and challenges of service business development using current service offering. This study revealed that the service business development success factors and challenges for development of company’s current service offering largely support the success factors and challenges noted by the literature in general. The study also revealed new indicators related to the importance of technology and internal indicators, which increase service business growth opportunities of the company’s current service offering.
The research was conducted as a qualitative single case study. The case company of this research was a large company, which operated globally in automation industry. In the basis of the literature review, a core knowledge of service business development was established. The primary data was collected from 21 semi-structured interviews. 18 of these interviews were conducted in Finland and three in the United Kingdom. Additionally, secondary data from the case company’s internal databases, external market analyses and the case company’s competitors’ annual reports were used to enhance the validity of the research and to analyze the case company’s business environment. Informal discussions were also used in this research to validate the research results.
As a result of the study, a personalized service business development process was developed for the case company to analyze its current services’ service business growth opportunities. The research also revealed four key prerequisites to service business development. These were ability and tools to sell and deliver services as well as communication and managerial commitment. Additionally, the research identified and developed understanding on key success factors, indicators and challenges of service business development using current service offering. This study revealed that the service business development success factors and challenges for development of company’s current service offering largely support the success factors and challenges noted by the literature in general. The study also revealed new indicators related to the importance of technology and internal indicators, which increase service business growth opportunities of the company’s current service offering.