Executive Service Roundtable
How to launch new services successfully
Operationalising and commercialising new services through each phase of the lifecycle
A few notes from the discussion sessions
Below are some topics and takeaways from our discussion.
These notes are not a detailed transcription or summary, nor does it repeat topics already presented at the beginning of the Roundtable meeting.
- The challenges and approaches largely depend on the type of service innovation at hand:
- Types of innovation range from:
- Incremental enhancement of existing offering.
- A new solution to the customer problems we already try to solve.
- Solutions to unmet customers’ needs.
- Solutions to latent customers’ needs.
- Entering markets new to our company.
- The level of uncertainty during development and launch increases along with the types of innovation mentioned above. These uncertainties must be managed and validated during the introduction phase, establishing a problem-solution-fit and a product (service)-market-fit.
- Types of innovation range from:
- The launch of newly developed services requires a significant (50% or more) effort and investment compared to the development phase. This is to drive internal adoption and customer adoption.
- We must be sensitive to different needs for different:
- Customer segments (types of business, maturity of operations, etcetera).
- Customers in different regions across the world.
- Two major risks when developing and launching new services:
- Overthinking, leading to analysis paralysis and no progress.
- Underthinking, leading to high risks of failure, lost investments and declining confidence from internal stakeholders.
- Customers do not buy into your new service offering can have several reasons, like:
- Not well articulating the customer value
- Trying to solve a latent need, which needs to be developed. This can take years.
- To identify, validate and articulate the customer value, the following is vital:
- Talk with (friendly) customers about:
- Their needs (tip of the iceberg).
- Their vision, strategy, priorities and future needs.
- Involve these customers in the development and introduction phase, and do trials with them.
- Discuss with these customers what impact the services had during these trials and what the bottom-line result was for the key metrics they find relevant.
- Get more data about the customer value (and value for your own business).
- Build a business case for your customers.
- Talk with (friendly) customers about:
- Also, your customers go through a transformation journey, developing the maturity and digitalisation of their operations and asset management.
- Offer a minimum viable offering that resonates now without asking them to make a quantum leap they cannot adopt right now.
- Develop a stepping-stone assortment of offerings, providing them with the solutions for each phase in their journey.
- These will also enable your organisation and stakeholders to adopt the new service offerings step by step.
- Having a service development team that drives the first steps of the introduction without too much burden on the operating companies can make life much easier. Once you have the data for a compelling internal business case, you have the tools to build buy-in with the executive leadership team and other stakeholders.
- Driving sales performance with equipment sales does require a top-down commitment to adjust priorities and incentive schemes.