Search results

The previous literature has indicated that the productisation of services may play a role in service management, although a certain level of obscurity still surrounds the concept. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the meaning of service productisation (SP) as well as to contribute to a greater understanding of the concept.

An inductive analysis was applied to 13 instances of activities related to the productisation of services, with secondary data being analysed to identify practices relevant to SP and to examine their significance. The analysis is guided by an extensive literature review.

SP has been found to play a role in systematising and tangibilising a service offering and its related processes as well as in formalising the processes and service offerings. The potential elements of SP have been identified and supporting evidence has been provided. The findings indicate that SP has a specific focus on the offering and its related processes, with the aim being to create a service product that can be sold, delivered and invoiced. SP may utilise various practices and techniques, and customer orientation also plays a significant role. A typology of SP has been created by reflecting on its commercial and technical aspects.

This study has important implications for the service industry as it provides a structure and key considerations for productising services.

This study is one of the first to seek evidence for the concept of SP from multiple instances of SP as well as an extensive literature base. The typology created provides a context for discussing SP as well as reflecting on its commercial and technical aspects.

The study aims to explore the benefits of service productisation to provide further understanding on the productisation concept as support for business processes and service management. The concept has been deficiently discussed regardless of the potential significance to the whole formed by service products, business processes, information technology (IT), people and data.

In the study, the exploratory empirical evidence is presented from 16 cases, 4 of which are from companies that are globally well-known.

The key findings of the paper include an overview of the benefits of service productisation and the relation to service offering, service processes and related resources. The concept links to the management of the whole formed by service products, business processes, IT, people and data. The noted benefits seem to be applicable to productisation of different service types, whilst some service characteristics may affect the specific emphasis.

The limitations involve using secondary data, which, however, makes the cases less biased regarding the aims. Primary data are required to gain further insights into the phenomena and the identified benefits.

The findings provide support for issues that are commonly discussed by practitioners on a concept that is less studied by the scientific literature. Practitioners can work towards organisational efficiency and effectiveness by understanding the benefits of productisation. Understanding service productisation can support the effective management of business processes and work towards prosperity in the service business.

The study is the first one to analyse the benefits of service productisation by exploring the issue through multiple cases and attempting to identify aspects for further attention by the academic community.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse current challenges and to articulate the preconditions for data-driven, fact-based product portfolio management (PPM) based on commercial and technical product structures, critical business processes, corporate business IT and company data assets. Here, data assets were classified from a PPM perspective in terms of (product/customer/supplier) master data, transaction data and Internet of Things data. The study also addresses the supporting role of corporate-level data governance.

The study combines a literature review and qualitative analysis of empirical data collected from eight international companies of varying size.

Companies’ current inability to analyse products effectively based on existing data is surprising. The present findings identify a number of preconditions for data-driven, fact-based PPM, including mutual understanding of company products (to establish a consistent commercial and technical product structure), product classification as strategic, supportive or non-strategic (to link commercial and technical product structures with product strategy) and a holistic, corporate-level data model for adjusting the company’s business IT (to support product portfolio visualisation).

The findings provide a logical and empirical basis for fact-based, product-level analysis of product profitability and analysis of the product portfolio over the product life cycle, supporting a data-driven approach to the optimisation of commercial and technical product structure, business IT systems and company product strategy. As a virtual representation of reality, the company data model facilitates product visualisation. The findings are of great practical value, as they demonstrate the significance of corporate-level data assets, data governance and business-critical data for managing a company’s products and portfolio.

The study contributes to the existing literature by specifying the preconditions for data-driven, fact-based PPM as a basis for product-level analysis and decision making, emphasising the role of company data assets and clarifying the links between business processes, information systems and data assets for PPM.

This study aims to facilitate consistency of information in building information modelling (BIM) and address the current BIM gaps through the perspectives of the productization concept and product structure (PS).

The study follows a conceptual research approach in conjunction with a single case study. First, the previous studies on BIM implementation, productization and PS are reviewed. Further, a case study is used to analyse the current state of productization in the construction sector and develop a functional PS for construction.

A Part-Phase-Elements Matrix is proposed as a construction-specific PS to facilitate consistency in information and to enhance BIM. The proposed matrix provides new avenues to facilitate consistent information exchange through the interconnection between conceptual PS and standard building objects library, and encourage collaborative communication between stakeholders.

This study explores the core of the productization concept and PS as means to facilitate consistency of information and thus address the current gaps in BIM. This as building projects progressively move towards systematic modular and prefabricated construction where the flow of reliable information about product and construction offerings becomes increasingly important.

This study aims to focus on creating sales capability as part of new product development (NPD). The aim is to define generic requirements for building sales capability as a part of NPD and to propose a necessary process by defining key activities for sales readiness.

An inductive and qualitative research method was used to construct a sales capability creation process based on a current state analysis in seven companies.

The results indicate that the status of companies’ sales-related planning varies during the NPD, and the related activities are not systematically managed. Considering sales early is necessary to enable a smooth and cost-efficient start of sales, and to avoid unnecessary delays and problems in other functions. At the same time, the companies recognise the need for improvement.

This paper presents a potential process including systematic activities for creating sales capability in conjunction with product development, which is novel to the literature. The proposed process is applicable in aligning industrial company needs.

This study aims to improve understanding of companies’ motives and concerns in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

The qualitative research method was used to study 17 companies based on two case projects.

The joint commercial product portfolio is introduced as a new type of co-marketing. The possible business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio are identified. The companies seem to be motivated by and concerned about similar issues that also apply to other forms of co-marketing.

The study consisted of two case projects in the same country and, thus, share fairly similar business environments and cultures. Therefore, the same results may not be obtained for a study that is conducted in a different location.

Managers of SMEs can benefit from the results of this study by improving their understanding of co-marketing opportunities through the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio with suitable companies. In addition, the results provide managers with insights into the challenges that should be considered when planning marketing cooperation.

The study provides new perspectives on the existing co-marketing literature by discussing the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio as a vehicle to support companies’ business objectives. The study contributes to the increasing business-to-business co-marketing literature by presenting the business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges related to SMEs cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to understand data management challenges in e-maintenance systems from a holistically viewpoint through summarizing the earlier scattered research in the field, and second, to present a conceptual approach for addressing these challenges in practice.

The study is realized as a combination of a literature review and by the means of analyzing the practices on an industry leader in manufacturing and maintenance services.

This research provides a general understanding over data management challenges in e-maintenance and summarizes their associated proposed solutions. In addition, this paper lists and exemplifies different types and sources of data which can be collected in e-maintenance, across different organizational levels. Analyzing the data management practices of an e-maintenance industry leader provides a conceptual approach to address identified challenges in practice.

Since this paper is based on studying the practices of a single company, it might be limited to generalize the results. Future research topics can focus on each of mentioned data management challenges and also validate the applicability of presented model in other companies and industries.

Understanding the e-maintenance-related challenges helps maintenance managers and other involved stakeholders in e-maintenance systems to better solve the challenges.

The so-far literature on e-maintenance has been studied with narrow focus to data and data management in e-maintenance appears as one of the less studied topics in the literature. This research paper contributes to e-maintenance by highlighting the deficiencies of the discussion surrounding the perspectives of data management in e-maintenance by studying all common data management challenges and listing different types of data which need to be acquired in e-maintenance systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a tangible example of organisational solutions in effective design for manufacturing (DfM) in a large information and communications technology (ICT) company.

An interview study was carried out in a leading ICT company to clarify the practical realisation of DfM, and the current challenges encountered. The interviews covered all the key persons involved in DfM and related processes, in a case company that has successfully applied DfM for over a decade.

The paper shows the importance of a separate management organisation for coordinating the requirements of internal functions. With relation to the case company, this organisation, in contrast to the literature, is located in production, not in product development. Despite the successful application of DfM, the case company still has challenges in exploitation of related data systems.

This paper describes one of the top companies in its field. However, the obtained results could vary to some degree, should a wider set of companies be included in the study.

Managers of other companies could learn from this example at three levels: organisational solutions for DfM, its practical realisation, and the challenges encountered.

The existing literature is relatively scarce on organisational implications of DfM implementation. This paper identifies a functional organisational location, structure and practical realisation for effective DfM.

The purpose of this paper is to provide tangible examples of product data management (PDM) practices in large high‐tech companies, and to highlight current challenges.

This paper is a qualitative interview study. First, a PDM system frame was defined to aid analyses. Second, an interview study was carried out in four companies to clarify the practical realisation of PDM, and the current challenges. The interviewees are experts in the field of PDM, currently holding significant related posts in their companies.

Overall, PDM activities are similar in all companies, however, there is some diversity in the realisation of these practices. PDM related challenges identified in this study are various, strongly influenced by company background and current organisational state.

This paper includes interviews in four companies with different backgrounds, and a workshop, providing a good view on topical issues in the field of PDM. The obtained results could vary to some degree, should the sample size be larger, or especially should the products of the studied companies be less complex.

This paper provides managers and PDM system developers' with a better understanding over the issues that are affecting PDM solution development and on major system requirements, together with relevant insight on current challenges.

The existing literature is relatively scarce in describing the practicalities of PDM. The obtained results highlight the significance of company background influencing the selection of PDM solutions.

Requirements management has become a challenge for new product development (NPD) as products are getting increasingly complicated and customer segments more fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to provide new ideas for improving requirements management in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector.

A qualitative interview study is carried out in the ICT sector to clarify the current challenges in requirements management. The results of the interview study are analysed using a benchmark from the automotive industry. This benchmark is chosen, as the automotive industry is a developed business sector that has streamlined its business processes, including its requirements management.

The paper shows how ICT can benefit from the experience of the car industry on issues such as managing customer needs throughout the NPD process, overflow of data and communicating requirements with suppliers.

Using another sector as a benchmark is not a straightforward process and results cannot be directly copied. Fresh ideas are, however, obtainable when a well‐developed benchmark is used and results are applied flexibly. Deeper analysis on individual areas indentified here might be interesting topics for further study.

The paper shows that managers in the ICT sector should pay more attention to their requirements management and serving the needs of internal customers. The requirements management of the Japanese automotive industry is a potential source for improvement initiatives.

The paper provides new perspectives for the requirements management of the ICT sector by benchmarking the Japanese automotive industry.