The tough lessons of 2020 will provoke two major developments in B2B, having to do with technology and people
If you work in the B2B space, you have almost certainly encountered the term “servitisation”. Across industries ranging from aviation to telecommunications, B2B companies are supplementing (in some cases, replacing) conventional product sales with services and solutions. Rolls-Royce’s pioneering “Power by the Hour” model is the prototypical example.
With the shift from supplier to solution provider, customers purchase a guaranteed outcome, instead of a tool and the risk that goes with it. This can transform a standard vendor-client relationship into a collaborative quest to unlock mutual value, claim proponents of solution offerings. Moreover, there is evidence that service-based businesses have greater profit potential on the whole, despite the heavy costs involved in adapting to this new business model.
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