A maturity model for the servitization of product-centric companies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the servitization phenomenon of product-centric companies, by identifying the resources, capabilities and organizational aspects needed to successfully deploy a servitized business model (BM). Design/methodology/approach – By adopting a literature-based approach, this paper develops a servitization maturity model (SeMM) aimed at assessing and positioning companies in the servitization journey. The paper also illustrates the model application to two small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a machinery and a forklift truck company. Findings – The SeMM identifies a set of 85 critical requirements that are used to evaluate the servitization level of product-centric companies, through a specific five-stage measurement scale. The requirements are categorized into: five maturity dimensions (organizational approach, process management, performance management, tools, capabilities) and nine BM Canvas components. The empirical application exemplifies how the SeMM can support managers in identifying and bridging the gaps in their servitization journey. Originality/value – The SeMM adopts an original bi-dimensional approach and provides an operationalization of the servitization process through the identification of specific critical requirements

MMs represent theories about how organizations evolve in a stage-by-stage manner along an anticipated, desired or logical path (R€ oglinger et al., 2012). MMs are, therefore, adequate for complex topics because the sequence of levels and their requirements, tracing multiple objectives and practices, can gradually lead the company through an improvement process (Wendler, 2012;Van Looy et al., 2014;Machado et al., 2017). In particular, MMs may have three different purposes (de Bruin et al., 2005): descriptive (diagnostic tools to assess the current capabilities of a company), prescriptive (identify desirable maturity levels and provide guidelines and improvement measures) and comparative (internal or external benchmarking).
Given their limited resources and experience, SMEs would particularly benefit from an assessment of their current situation and emergent gaps that can be provided by MMs (Mittal et al., 2018). Therefore, the MM approach appears suitable to address both the gaps about the lack of studies describing and prescribing how to servitize a product-centric firm (Baines et al., 2017) and the limited attention to the issues faced by SMEs in the servitization journey.

Maturity models for the service domain in product-centric contexts
Despite the fact that seminal works suggest that product-centric firms gradually shift along a product-service continuum (Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003;Martinez et al., 2010;Baines and Lightfoot, 2013), a structured effort toward a detailed characterization of servitization stages has not been carried out until recently (L€ utjen et al., 2017). It is not surprising, therefore, that few MMs concerning the service business in product-centric companies are found in the literature. They are summarized in Table I. Wikstr€ om et al. (2009) analyze the changes in project-based firms as they move from pure equipment-suppliers to being also service providers. Rapaccini et al. (2013) propose a service development (NSD) MM for product-centric firms built upon the following dimensions: the management of processes and projects; the use of specific resources, skills and tools; the involvement of customers, suppliers and other stakeholders; and the adoption of performance management systems. Jin et al. (2014), similarly, define a set of NSD success factors and group them into dimensions, namely: strategy management, process formalization, knowledge management and customer involvement. The four-stage product-centric service MM by Li et al. (2014) considers four dimensions: sales profit source, service business composition, service process quality and service infrastructure. Neff et al. (2014) developed a MM for the heavy equipment manufacturing industry to assess the information systems support to the product service system (PSS). Their MM, therefore, focuses on information technology as an enabler of servitization and evaluates the following key dimensions: performance measurement of industrial service, installed base management, mobile support for the service workforce, integration of service and product data and data quality assurance. Pigosso and McAloone (2016) applied the five-level Ecodesign MM to support companies in the development of sustainable PSSs. Finally, Alvarez et al. (2015) see servitization as an evolutionary process based on the relationships among players in the value chain. Their MM analyzes four key dimensions: market, network, customer and internal. Only the last two papers mentioned are close to the objective of this study, i.e. to assess the servitization maturity of a company. However, Pigosso and McAloone (2016) focus solely on the environmental sustainability aspect, while the MM by Alvarez et al. (2015) does not support the identification of the main weaknesses and actions to be deployed so that little prescriptive value could be obtained from the model. Moreover, it does not adopt a BM perspective.

Research process and method
To fill the gaps emerged from the previous analysis, we adopt a three-step research process. First, we carried out a literature review of MMs relevant for this research. We searched the Scopus database for papers published in scientific journals (conferences were excluded), using keywords such as "maturity model," " capability model," "process improvement model," "assessment model," "maturity grid" in combination with "servitization," "solutions" and "PSS." Among the 69 papers identified, 18 were selected and analyzed after reading the title and the abstract. Only seven of them propose a structured MM related to services in product-centric companies: they have been discussed in section 2.3. We then developed the SeMM, described in section 4. It is built on BM and maturity dimensions found in the literature and operationalized through specific "critical requirements" (Alvarez et al., 2015) that characterize servitized BMs. Besides the MMs analyzed in section 2.3 and the literature on MMs mentioned in section 2.2, to develop the 85 critical requirements in our model, we considered the relevant literature on servitization. In particular, we resorted to the reference framework proposed by   JMTM 31,4 BM components. To point out the requirements, we analyzed (and enriched) the set of literature analyzed in that paper. In the third step of the research, the model was applied to two companies undertaking the servitization journey, as described in section 5, to ascertain the exhaustiveness and practical applicability of the SeMM.
To enhance the reliability of the data collection and elaboration (Voss et al., 2002), we designed a research protocol where the SeMM requirements represent the list of aspects to be investigated. The application started with a full-day meeting with the top managers belonging to different business functions such as after-sales service, sales and marketing, research and development (R&D) and information systems. During the workshop, after identifying the business line object of the study and investigating the company BM and servitization journey, we investigated each critical requirement following the research protocol. A second half-day workshop was then carried out in each firm to discuss the results of the SeMM application, point out the relevant gaps and identify the most appropriate improvement actions.

Overview
The SeMM evaluates the servitization maturity level of product-centric companies through the assessment of a set of critical requirements. As shown in Figure 1, the model adopts a multi-dimensional approach (P€ oppelbuß and R€ oglinger, 2011): we follow a bi-dimensional approach similar to Kindstr€ om and Kowalowski (2014) who addressed service innovation and crossed a BM dimension with a capabilities and resources one. In our work, we cross BM components with maturity dimensions. The five maturity dimensions are derived from the review of relevant MMs in literature and are: organizational approach (e.g. Wikstr€ om et al., 2009;Rapaccini et al., 2013), management of processes (e.g.: Van Looy, 2014;Tarhan et al., 2016), performance management systems (e.g.: Alvarez et al., 2015), tools (e.g.: Rapaccini et al., 2013;Neff et al., 2014), capabilities (e.g.: Paulk et al., 1993 and others CMM models). For the BM components, instead, we resort to the nine building blocks of the BM Canvas model (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).   Table II reports the 85 critical requirements identified from the literature. In the following, they are described (they appear in italic), grouped according to the nine BM components (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).

Critical requirements
4.2.1 Value proposition. In servitized BMs, it becomes crucial to understand the nature of the value that can be generated and delivered to customers. Specific capabilities are needed to this end, such as design-specific value propositions to meet customers' products and service needs (Barquet et al., 2013) and develop new service offerings that create value for the customer (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014), which entails extending, repackaging, improving and introducing new lines of service in accordance with market opportunities (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2009). Specific tools and methods for service value proposition design should be used, such as visualization tools for the co-creation, representation and prototyping of customer-centered services (Kindstr€ om, 2010; Ker€ anen and Jalkala, 2013). In particular, new tools and procedures are needed to ease the determination of the value of the new offering. In addition, service portfolio management procedures should be in place (Saul and Gebauer, 2018). Therefore, providing solutions requires a more customer-centric organization (Saul and Gebauer, 2018) and a service logic translation capability to move away from a product-centric culture (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014).
4.2.2 Customer relationships. Customer relationships are critical for servitized BMs (e.g. Gebauer et al., 2005;Davies et al., 2007). Therefore, relational skills should be developed in both the sales and after-sales personnel (Kindstr€ om et al., 2015). Another important aspect concerns interactions with customers throughout the product lifecycle. It implies the definition of the extent of information sharing. For instance, procedures and practices for managing customer feedbacks on product/service experience need to be implemented to enable the product/service improvement and closer customer relationships (Meier et al., 2010;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). Similarly, information and communications technology (ICT) systems/applications that support the automatization of relationships and collaboration between customers and providers, such as Web-based information tools become fundamental (Reim et al., 2015).

Customer segments.
Understanding customer needs is critical to define value propositions that respond to different customer segments (Reim et al., 2015;Storbacka et al., 2013). In this process, required capabilities are understanding the customer's problem and interpret its real needs (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011) and managing customer's production processes data to gain intimate customer knowledge (Kindstr€ om, 2010;Storbacka, 2011). These capabilities represent the basis for providing the most appropriate offer to each customer. Therefore, procedures and practices for assessing customer preferences and needs on product and process-related information but also on service-related information should be established (Kindstr€ om, 2010;Storbacka, 2011;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014).

Key activities.
Servitization often requires developing new activities or redesigning the current ones. Marketing and sales activities, fleet maintenance planning, product retrofit, revamping, disposal and reverse logistic processes (Barquet et al., 2013;Liu et al., 2014) may be (re-)designed. Moreover, companies need the capability to communicate and make tangible the value for the customer of new offerings (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2009;Reim et al., 2015). To this end, companies should also develop specific sales tools or methods, such as a total cost of ownership model (Meier et al., 2010;Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011;Storbacka et al., 2013). To meet new product and service design requirements, special emphasis should be placed on aligning physical product characteristics with service (Reim et al., 2015): the R&D function, therefore, should design modular products and components (Mont et al., 2006), in which critical elements are easy to access and to repair (Azarenko et al., 2009), taking into account also the need for disassembly/recycling (Tukker, 2004 Establishment of a distinct service function with profit-and-loss accounting and responsibility for strategic service development Establishment of a distinct back-and front-office roles to improve or balance efficiency and effectiveness of service processes Performance management Metrics to measure service-related activities operational performances (e.g. response time, quality, etc.) Metrics to measure product state and product-process performances Process management Procedures and practices for development of new services Procedures and practices for total cost of ownership evaluation and assessment Procedures and practices for internal service-related processes (e.g. helpdesk) standardization Procedures for managing service delivery processes (e.g. technical assistance intervention) Procedures and practices for managing the integration between product and service development processes Procedures and practices for managing the involvement of different business functions in the product design and improvement Procedures and practices for aligning incentive and rewards systems of sales and marketing personnel to strategic service objectives Key activities Capabilities Capability of technical office to design modular products and components (product-design phase) Capability of technical office to design reliable products anticipating potential causes of failure during the product-design phase Capability of technical office to design products in which components are easy to access/replace during technical assistance (design for serviceability) Capability of technical office to design products taking into account the need for disassembly/recovery/disposal/recycling at the end of the product lifecycle and the environmental impact (design for end-of-life) Capability of technical office to design products taking into account the economical impact of the product during the whole product lifecycle Capability of the deputed roles to design modular services (service-design phase) Capability to formalize and standardize services/new service offerings Capability to communicate and make tangible the service value to the customer (sales and marketing personnel) Capability to communicate and make tangible the service value to the customer (technical assistance personnel) Capability to organize, orchestrate and manage the after-sales activities Capability to internally coordinate sales and field service organizations Tools Tools for supporting the product design accordingly to new service design requirements Tools for supporting the development of new services Tools for total cost of ownership evaluation and assessment Tools for supporting sales and marketing personnel (e.g. payback simulation tools) Tools for planning and managing maintenance activities (e.g. scheduling routine maintenance) Tools for supporting the development and delivery of maintenance activities (continued ) Servitization Rapaccini et al., 2013), together with procedures for the development of new services (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011;Storbacka et al., 2013) and service engineering practices for the systematic design and development of services (Meier et al., 2010;Rapaccini et al., 2013). Also, a company needs to formalize and standardize services for a more effective service delivery (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). The service delivery planning and execution processes are crucial in servitized BMs (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2009). They should evolve from an uncontrolled and random reaction to a controlled and structured set of actions: to this end, procedures and practices for internal service-related processes standardization along with procedures for managing service delivery processes are required (Storbacka, 2011;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). This evolution may entail also important organizational changes, such as the establishment of a separate service business unit (Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003) and a clear separation between front-office (e.g. technical assistance) and back-office (e.g. help desk) activities. In fact, a dedicated back-office infrastructure enables cost-efficient operations (Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). Companies should also implement specific tools to support the service planning, delivery and execution to avoid or minimize troubleshooting processes and also create a knowledge base to further improve service processes (Meier et al., 2010;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014).
Since different functions should synergistically operate in service development, planning and execution, the level of interaction and integration among different company functions plays an important role (Nordin and Kowalkowski, 2010;Gebauer and Kowalkowski, 2012). Thus, the inter-functional coordination capability should lead, for example, to increased involvement of the service organization in the sales process (Kowalkowski, 2011). Consequently, procedures and practices for managing these integrations should be implemented.
4.2.5 Key resources. A new corporate culture and top management commitment to the service business) to enhance the service orientation of employees Barquet et al. (2013); Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011. Other critical resource in servitized BMs is the installed base, as it provides critical insights about product operations and valuable customer knowledge (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011), and the related monitoring technologies (Ardolino et al., 2018). Therefore, the company should implement procedures and practices for collection, interpretation and processing of product, process-and service-related data (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011). Similarly, traditional information technologies should be integrated with new ones (such as internet-of-things), enabling data collection, interpretation and reporting (Neff et al., 2014). Consequently, companies need to acquire or develop the capability to collect product-, process-, service-related data and interpret them, and in particular, to analyze data collected from the installed base (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011).
As the availability of financial resources is a prerequisite for servitized BM (Tukker, 2004), a company needs to elaborate business plans to acquire financial resources (Azarenko et al., 2009;Ng et al., 2013) and, at the same time, procedures to manage financial resources allocation (Mont, 2006;Barquet et al., 2013).
4.2.6 Partnerships. Companies may decide to outsource activities or acquire external resources to deliver services . Selecting partners is, therefore, essential to develop a network that delivers services effectively, as it is consequently the capability to measure their performances over time (Kindstr€ om, 2010;Storbacka, 2011;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). As in a servitized environment, relationships with partners are crucial, (Saccani et al., 2014) procedures and practices for drawing-up agreements with key partner/ suppliers are needed to formalize and specify contractually the responsibilities and obligations of all parties (Ng et al., 2013). Another crucial aspect is the sharing of data with partners, to build trust and strengthen relationships , relying on information systems and tools for information sharing with the network (Storbacka, 2011;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). JMTM 31,4 4.2.7 Channels. Companies need to rethink how they create customer awareness (Kindstr€ om et al., 2015) and deliver offerings. A company should establish sales teams/key account managers to interact with key customers and create a "service-savvy" sales force (Ulaga and Loveland, 2014). This may lead to the reconfiguration of the sales channel through internalization or externalization (Kindstr€ om et al., 2015).
A similar development path has to be followed for after-sales service channels, where the establishment of a field service network allows venturing into more complex offerings (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011). In fact, in addition to selling and delivering services, the after-sales channel collects critical information about customers, service operations and the market (Gebauer and Kowalkowski, 2012).
4.2.8 Cost structure. Companies need to assess the cost of servitized offerings (Datta and Roy, 2010). To this end, specific metrics have to be defined (e.g. to evaluate service-related activities costs, financial performances, fleet financial costs, etc.) using, for example, data collected from the installed base (Storbacka, 2011;Barquet et al., 2013). Moreover, traditional cost assessment procedures are no longer suitable in the new setting, and tools for reporting and cost accounting of product-service solutions are required (Datta and Roy, 2010). The evaluation of how risks are shared among the company, its suppliers/partners and the customer is critical in servitized BMs. To this end, companies should develop the capabilities to evaluate operating and financial risks and manage uncertainty, to distribute risks to other network partners and to design and implement safeguarding mechanisms (Nordin et al., 2011;Kindstr€ om and Kowalkowski, 2014). Moreover, procedures have to be implemented to formalize and manage financial and operating risks (Tukker, 2004;Nordin et al., 2011). Finally, mechanisms to reduce customers' liability risks and enhance control over production uncertainties should be arranged (Azarenko et al., 2009).
4.2.9 Revenue model. Several revenue generation mechanisms can be developed in servitized BMs, which require new pricing capabilities (Bonnemeier et al., 2010;Rapaccini, 2015). As payments may be based on the availability of the product and/or service, on the usage intensity, or on the results achieved (Barquet et al., 2013), the capability to define reliable outcome expectations with the customer and define the corresponding metrics/parameters to evaluate the agreed outcome are required (Meier et al., 2010;Storbacka, 2011;Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011).

SeMM operationalization
In the MM literature, a common design principle is to represent maturity as a number of cumulative stages (generally five) with a logical progression (de Bruin et al., 2005). The SeMM, thus, operationalizes the maturity concept with five-stage scales to measure the service orientation of each requirement (Table III). We mostly adopt standard scales based on the literature (one for each dimension), but also develop ad hoc ones when needed to take into account the peculiarities of some requirement.
Based on the evidence collected at the companies, we assign a maturity score to each requirement, ranging from 1 (no service orientation) to 5 (highest servitization maturity). By aggregating the scores of the requirements according to the BM component and/or maturity dimension they belong, the SeMM provides a maturity level for each dimension and for each BM component. By averaging out such scores, an average servitization maturity score for the company is obtained. Figure 2 provides examples of radar charts visualizing the maturity of BM components and maturity dimensions and of their disaggregation into the constituting requirements.

Empirical application
The SeMM has been applied to two companies undertaking a servitization journey, HSM and FORK. HSM is a medium Italian company that manufactures high-speed milling systems, Servitization characterized by a high customization and flexibility. Machine sales represent the greatest part of the turnover (more than 75 percent), while after-sales services were traditionally considered a "necessary evil," and only recently, the company has started focusing on the development of the service business. The service portfolio is still mainly made of base services, such as technical assistance, training and spare parts provision. FORK is a medium Spanish firm operating in the forklift truck sector. Its business evolved in the past ten years from a reseller to being mainly a forklift rental company. Today, FORK has a fleet of over 2,000 forklift trucks on long-term rental and a related business of financial and after-sales services.

Servitization maturity assessment
The assessment of the servitization maturity leads to two very different pictures. Figure 3 shows that, both in the maturity dimensions and BM components, FORK is consistently positioned slightly below or above Level 4, while HSM generally stands around Level 2[1]. In the following, the results of the SeMM application are briefly presented, grouped by key components.
Key activities -HSM has no explicit strategy for both existing and new services. FORK, instead, has structured processes and responsibilities for the development of new services, adopts service engineering methods and specific workflows to guide the service design phase, ensuring the participation of different business functions. On the contrary, HSM has no procedures and practices for managing the integration between product and service development. Similarly, while FORK adopts clearly defined procedures for service delivery (e.g. technical support, help desk, etc.), in HSM, these are still missing. In addition, FORK has a service business unit with profit and loss responsibility. Revenue and costs -HSM has no specific metrics to measure service-related operational performances (e.g. response time, quality, etc.) and costs, and the management acknowledges that this may be critical when new services related to a newly developed remote monitoring system will be launched. FORK, on the other hand, has detailed indicators to monitor services performance, encompassing internal, external, customer and financial aspects. Moreover, FORK has also developed the capability to design safeguarding mechanisms and to evaluate operational and financial risks. As the latter aspect is critical also to determine how to price services, FORK is able to charge its rental fleet with periodic fees that also include periodic maintenance. On the opposite, HSM adopts a traditional one-off transactional revenue model.
Key resources -In HSM, the technical know-how (mechanical and software) represents the core competence. However, the low level of service orientation in the organization could hinder the development of servitized offerings requiring to move some key employees from purely technical roles to service-related ones. On the other hand, FORK has moved from emphasizing only technical product features to a service delivery logic, and specific roles are set in the organizational chart to promote services and to be a unique touch point for the customer. Both companies are rather immature in terms of ICT tools and monitoring technologies: a common critical aspect is the data collection from the installed base. However, they have recently implemented sensors and tools for data collection and product health management, which will enable the collection and elaboration of data about equipment and customer operations, allowing to strengthen customer relationships.
Channels and partnerships -Besides the common involvement of partners in the technological development of remote monitoring systems, great differences emerge. In fact, while FORK has designed a field service network made both by internal personnel and external service partners, HSM has not yet structured its channels to provide field services effectively. FORK, moreover, has a formalized set of criteria for partner selection and has improved the communication and information sharing with its sales and service network to secure transparency and visibility.
Customer segmentations and relationships -While FORK adopts ad hoc tools to ease the information exchange with customers, HSM instead still collects few data from customers, using spreadsheets not integrated with the enterprise resource system (ERP) system (e.g. technical and fault reports). Consequently, no formal procedures for managing customer feedbacks are present in HSM, while FORK has implemented workflows to collect and manage feedbacks on product/service experience. This also allows FORK to better understand customer preferences and needs: thanks to the data collected, FORK has developed customer segmentation criteria. HSM, instead currently lacks the capability to design customer-specific value propositions. Servitization 5.2 SeMM usage and improvement actions HSM has recently introduced a new smart spindle in the machines and aims to develop preventive and predictive maintenance services, thanks to this technological innovation and to a condition-based monitoring tool (designed by a partner). Instead, FORK aims to develop a new short-term rental business (i.e. rentals ranging from few days to two months), to increasingly exploit its fleet. This offering will include a novel full-service contract to customers and a daily rental fee based on the actual forklift usage (pay-x-use). The short-term rental will rely on a novel field management system that allows FORK to monitor and analyze the signals collected from the forklift (e.g. working hours, battery level, engine temperature, etc.).
Based on the maturity assessment previously illustrated and the innovations and objectives described above, FORK and HSM identified a set of actions to improve their servitization maturity and sustain the development of the new offering. The actions are listed in Table IV. 6. Conclusion 6.1 Theoretical contribution A need for studies aimed at describing and prescribing how to servitize a product-centric firm has been observed (Baines et al., 2017). The MM developed in this paper contributes to fill this gap and to accumulate knowledge on the service transformation of product-centric companies. The model has an original bi-dimensional structure, combining five maturity dimensions with the BM Canvas components. Through the identification of 85 detailed critical requirements, it provides a comprehensive understanding of the service transition phenomenon. In particular, it helps addressing some among the most acknowledged challenges of servitization, the cultural readiness and the top management commitment (Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003;Gebauer et al., 2005, Martinez et al., 2010. In fact, the SeMM generates awareness about the critical aspects to be controlled, contributing to the creation of a company culture about the many elements, both inward and customer-facing, to be considered and aligned when undertaking a servitization journey. In addition, as several challenges hinder the achievement of the expected strategic, financial and marketing benefits of servitization (Zhang and Banerji, 2017), the choice of using BM components as one of the axis of our SeMM helps reading servitization in the light of the BM transformations needed, on each component and at each maturity stage. The identification of gaps in single requirements or in their aggregation (e.g. BM components) supports the definition and prioritization of the actions and transformations required to servitize, as shown by the case studies.
Another specific contribution of this paper stands in the operationalization of the servitization concept, thanks to the definition of critical requirements and their measurement scales, that address another research gap observed in the literature. In fact, it has been pointed out that servitization measures are varied and inconsistent across studies (Calabrese et al., 2019) and mostly based on one single indicator, such as the number of services (or service types) offered or the share of revenue made from services. Servitization being a largely intra-and inter-organizational multidisciplinary matter, linking its measure simply to an output indicator cannot capture the complexity of the phenomenon (L€ utjen et al., 2017). The adoption of a multidimensional and comprehensive perspective on the organization and its relationships, instead, appears as more appropriate way to deal with the measure of servitization.
Finally, because SMEs often do not possess the resources or the experience to successfully servitize (Kowalkowski et al., 2013), this research contributes to the development of guidelines and tools that SMEs can apply for pointing out the capabilities, resources and organizational changes needed that are advocated in the literature   (1) Implementation of specific ICT tools to ease the relationships with customers (e.g. customer relationship management (CRM), trouble ticketing, etc.) (2) Formalize specific procedures to manage customer feedbacks (3) Develop relational capabilities both in the sales and after-sales personnel (1) Implement a Web portal for short-term rental customers: ticketing, renting and automatic configuration of the forklift (2) Improve the existing internal procedure for managing customer feedback to use these feedbacks for product/service improvement and strengthen customer relationships Customer segments (1) Design a periodic survey to assess customer satisfaction and needs (2) Develop new customer segmentation criteria and accordingly manage the customer portfolio (3) Develop the capability to customize value proposition to meet actual customer needs (1) Adapt the existing customer advisory procedure to better define the new shortterm rental value to each customer segment Key activities (1) Establishment of service business unit (2) Formalization of workflow for the service design phase (3) Formalization of workflow for the service planning and delivery phase (4) Implementation of tools for managing service-related activities and enable predictive maintenance (5) Identification of relevant KPIs, especially related to the service function (6) Design specific marketing initiative for new full-service contracts (7) Define procedure that formalize and standardize the data collection, interpretation and processing (from product and service activities) (1) Create a dedicated team for the analysis and interpretation of new signals collected from the forklift (2) Improve the current procedure for forklifts refurbishment (i.e. initial diagnosis, disassembly, painting and repair, assembly and final quality tests) (3) Improve logistics and reverse logistics processes (4) Develop specific marketing initiative to promote the short-term rental model aiming to clarify the new values for the customers Key resources (1) Define new service roles in the organization chart (2) Define new job profiles to acquire specific capabilities needed (3) Develop a project management and planning attitude (4) Integration/migration of the data manually collected into the ERP (5) Exploit the functionalities of the new condition-based monitoring tool (6) Use new techniques for product design accordingly to the service requirements (e.g. implementation of new diagnostic sensor on the machines; adoption of design-for-X techniques) (1) Exploit the functionalities of the new fleet management and health management systems (2) Implement additional devices for the connectivity of the forklift (3) Implement new additional sensors on the battery (i.e. monitoring the electric energy consumption will help to understand the real usage of the battery and when it needs to be regenerated) (4) Implement geo-localization of the forklift to ease their quick (re)-allocation in the short-term rental business (continued ) . For instance, a critical aspect for SMEs concerns the sales and service channels, which are often intermediated (Gebauer et al., 2010): consequently, partnerships have a key role in providing SMEs access to the end-customer base and/or the additional capabilities needed to develop and sell service offerings (Kowalkowski et al., 2013;Paiola et al., 2013). Those aspects are explicitly assessed in the SeMM, showing how the critical requirements structure proposed can guide SMEs in identifying the key aspects for their servitization journey and the improvement actions to be undertaken.

Managerial implications
From a managerial perspective, the SeMM responds to the call for application-oriented research (Baines et al., 2017). The model provides a way to assess the servitization maturity of the five dimensions and nine BM components, also in a visual fashion (Figures 2 and 3), suggesting priority action areas for the company management. Therefore, managers can use the proposed model to identify and bridge the (internal and external) gaps to successfully deploy the new BM, selecting specific actions to overcome them, as it has been shown through the case application in section 5.
In particular, the model can be particularly useful to SMEs, supporting practitioners in the servitization journey through a rigorous yet practical tool, helping them bridging the distance with large companies. In fact, the SeMM supports managers, to successfully leverage, coordinate and align the transformations needed to servitize.
Moreover, the cases show how the model can be applied in product-centric companies coming from both a pure manufacturing backgroundhaving traditionally conceived services as a "necessary evil"and from a reseller/distributor oneseeking to create value for the customer through additional services and new revenue models.

Partnerships
(1) Develop new external partnerships to provide maintenance in countries where HSM is not present with a direct subsidiary (2) Define procedures that help to formalize and specify contractually the responsibilities and obligations of all parties (1) Develop new partnerships with local logistics providers and financial service providers (2) Design specific indicators to monitor partners' performances in the short-term rental business Channels (1) Design a new after-sales channel, structuring a field service network (2) Define a new unique touching point (e.g. "sales support and customer service profile") (3) Periodic inter-firms meeting to ease the interaction among sales and after-sales channels (1) Manage the coexistence of short-and long-term rental models Cost structure (1) Formalize procedures for financial risk assessment and evaluation (2) Formalize procedures for operational risk assessment and evaluation (1) Develop a total cost of ownership tool for the short-term rental (2) Adapt the existing procedure for financial risk assessment to short-term rental Revenue model (1) Develop new pricing capabilities (2) Definition of new reliable outcome expectations with the customer for the new predictive service (3) Formalize the reward system and explicitly indicate that it is oriented to something different than new product sale (1) Align incentive and rewards systems to new strategic short-term rental objectives (2) Develop a new capability to elaborate business plans to quantify to customers the new value of the short-term rental business Table IV. JMTM 31,4

Limitations and research opportunities
This study comes with some limitations, suggesting avenues for future research. First, the empirical application relies on two case studies only, and it should be extended to additional companies and sectors to verify its reliability and consistency. Second, although the SeMM lists 85 critical requirements, some crossings between BM components and maturity dimensions are not described by any item. Future research could focus on these crossings, to identify critical requirements to be added to the current set.
Third, further studies may investigate the relationships among the critical requirements identified, leading to the definition of archetypal configurations of servitized BMs (i.e. configurations of the requirements for specific value propositions, such as "pay-per-use").
Finally, as companies may adopt different BMs simultaneously (e.g. to address different markets or customer segments), future research may investigate how the SeMM can support companies in defining the configuration of resources and capabilities in a multiple BM perspective.