Transforming towards “PaaS” offerings : Areas of concern for OEMs & Transformation Readiness Scale

Abstract: The purpose of the project is to investigate and gain knowledge about the process of transforming OEMs’ business structures from a transactional business to a result-oriented product service system or a performance as a service offering. Companies from various market segments have started to offer their customers result-oriented offerings to prolong the life cycle of their products and promote longer customer relationships to secure future business. The aim of providing a resultoriented offering is to provide the effect of a product or service while alleviating the customer from tedious time and resource-consuming operations. Transforming towards result-oriented offerings sets demands on various departments and challenges the company in unforeseen aspects. The aim is to identify the areas of concern that will challenge the OEM and create an evaluation tool for OEMs used to visualize their status and development towards Performance as a Service offering. To gain a deeper understanding of this process, semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents representing a diverse set of OEMs. In combination with the literature study, the results from the interviews presented the following areas of concern which in turn can be transformed into capabilities if managed correctly, are separated into two global challenges. • Digital challenges: Access to customer data, IoT data collection, analysis, and datautilization, and digital service interface. • Needed capabilities: Service design, Sales operations, Operational processes,Organizational structure, Customer ecosystem, Integration of departments, End-user focus, Product/service portfolio, Organizational ecosystem, Contextual understanding, Strengths and weaknesses, and financial/regulatory challenges. The findings regarding the areas of concern were utilized to construct the evaluation tool “Transformation Readiness Scale” (TRS) used to help OEMs visualize their current status regarding their transformation towards aaS offerings. The results and analysis proved that it is recommended for OEMs to incorporate all areas of concern whilst transforming towards their new offerings and not to disregard any of them. Each area provides vital capabilities needed to provide a sufficient and successful Performance as a Service offering to their customers.