Only 28% of senior leaders in UK organisations think their area of business is ahead of the servitisation curve when compared to the same area within competitors.
This is according to findings of research commissioned by IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, polling senior leadership across multiple industries about servitisation maturity.
With servitisation becoming an increasingly popular approach for organisations looking to inject value into their business processes, many are already identifying where it can provide greatest value for them.
From the survey, 88% of leaders highlighted supply chain and 80% pointed to R&D as areas that can evolve to deliver servitisation benefits, but the process is ongoing. More than four out-of-ten leaders (43%) also point to the supply chain, and 32% to R&D, as areas that need to evolve fastest, integrating disparate data and systems to develop a customer-centred, as-as-service approach to enable these benefits.
To help them evolve, respondents also highlighted key technologies organisations will need to invest in to achieve their servitisation goals. Nearly half of respondents (48%) recognised they need to implement AI in order to evolve, with 47% saying they must implement machine learning, and 41% considering automation.
However, the technology is only one part of a wider business shift, as senior leaders also need to turn their attention inwards, looking at their own current skills and capabilities. They identified limited analytics for effective delivery, insufficient technology, and difficulty in integrating service offerings as the top barriers to servitisation.
When combined, improvement in these areas will enable organisations to strengthen internal efficiencies, deliver a better customer experience, and allow for new innovations to come to the fore which will in turn, help set them apart from competitors and encourage business growth.
Maggie Slowik, Global Industry Director for Manufacturing, IFS said: “In the current climate where organisations face both intense competition and internal pressure to deliver return on investment, servitisation and shift to an outcome-based model is increasingly attractive. However, they need to ensure it delivers the promised benefits, as it is a full transformation of their commercial model.
“What our survey clearly shows, however, is that many large organisations across the UK are encountering challenges, caused by a shortage of internal expertise; a lack of technological capabilities; and difficulties integrating the systems they do have. That’s why it’s key to partner with a company that can help them to overcome the barriers and ultimately excel. Having a solution in place that can bring all your systems together and provide a simple, single view of your data will allow organisations to draw on value-adding insights that can provide that much-desired competitive edge.”
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