From moving earth to moving data : A study of digital information flows in the earthmoving business ecosystem

Abstract: In an increasingly digitised world, the connectivity and data within machines is becoming more important, giving possibilities to analyse and improve the business of the actors involved. The digitalisation within the earthmoving industry has so far been lagging compared to other industries but is now starting to gain more traction within the industry. With the increased interest in digitalisation within the industry, questions arise as to how this might affect the involved actors within the ecosystem. The purpose of this thesis aims to investigate how data from the earthmoving contractors’ operations can be used within the earthmoving ecosystem. In order to do so, all actors involved in the capturing, sharing and usage of data have been mapped, as well as the offering back towards the earthmoving contractor. The study used a case study approach of embedded design in order to get an in-depth understanding of the specific business ecosystem while investigating the involved actors. The study used an explorative approach due to the novel nature of the phenomenon of ecosystems in terms of data in the earthmoving context. What the study has shown is that the positions and links between actors within the ecosystem has changed due to the increased data coming from the earthmoving contractors’ operations, and the offerings back towards the contractors have changed as well. Actors within the ecosystem are becoming increasingly dependent on each other to deliver their value propositions and issues of unalignment can negatively affect the value proposition to the end user, the earthmoving contractor. The end user, which is also the actor generating the data is therefore the one seeing least direct benefits of it.