If your service relies on data from the equipment you supply, ask a blunt question before the next renewal: if
the customer shared those readings with another provider, what would still justify your fee?
The EU Data Act makes this a commercial question worth preparing for. It gives qualifying customers greater
choice over who can use their equipment data. Manufacturers offering services need to explain why customers
should keep paying them: what will they deliver, and what responsibility will they take for performance?
01
The customer gets more choice
For users in the EU, the Data Act strengthens rights to access data generated through the use of connected
equipment. Where the rules apply, they can also ask for data within the Act’s scope to be shared with another
eligible provider, including a competing maintenance company. These rules also apply to UK and other non-EU
manufacturers placing connected products within scope on the EU market.
Customers can use that data within their own maintenance teams or authorise another provider to work with it.
These are rights of access and use, not a transfer of ownership. They concern raw and pre-processed equipment
data readily available to the company holding them, together with information needed to interpret them. They
do not automatically include proprietary software or insights produced through substantial additional analysis.
Data protection and trade-secret safeguards still apply.
The Act has generally applied since 12 September 2025. Its additional design obligation now applies to
connected products, and services related to them, placed on the EU market after 12 September 2026. Making
data accessible belongs in equipment design decisions as well as the service offer.
12.09.26
Connected products, and related services, placed on the EU market after this date must be designed to make data accessible.
02
The readings are only the start
Operating data can show how equipment is behaving. The practical work is deciding whether a change in parameters signals a developing fault, what action to take and how to fit that work around production.
A manufacturer’s engineering knowledge can improve diagnosis. A capable service network can turn that diagnosis into a timely response. Sharing data does not automatically reproduce those capabilities. The manufacturer still needs to show how they improve the customer’s operation and justify the fee.
The harder question is what happens to the service promise when several providers influence the machine’s
performance. If the manufacturer commits to availability while another party plans or performs maintenance,
who decides when to intervene? Who can authorise a shutdown? Who carries the consequences of delay?
A manufacturer’s commitments should reflect the decisions it can influence.
Before promising availability, manufacturers should agree how maintenance decisions will be coordinated and
performance risk allocated. Their commitments should reflect the decisions they can influence.
03
Give the customer a reason to stay
At the Advanced Services Group, our business model work examines what customers value, what it takes to
deliver that value and how a provider can do so profitably. The Data Act gives industrial leaders a reason to
revisit those questions for their existing services. With the customer’s authorisation, a manufacturer acting as an eligible provider in the EU could also use data from other suppliers’ equipment to develop services across a production line.
Existing services and new offers raise the same question: what is the customer being asked to pay for? Is it expert interpretation of equipment data to help the customer’s maintenance team decide what to do? Is it a managed maintenance response? Or is it responsibility for an agreed level of equipment availability? Each offer needs a clear account of the work involved and the risks accepted. A customer may value specialist advice while
keeping maintenance in-house; the commercial offer should reflect that choice.
Bring the people selling the service and those delivering it into that conversation, alongside finance.
S A L E S – Needs a convincing answer when a customer asks why it should renew.
O P E R A T I O N S – Needs to know whether the promised response is achievable.
F I N A N C E – Needs to understand whether the price covers the delivery costs and the risks the business
agrees to bear.
That discussion may reveal a reason to invest in diagnosis, strengthen local delivery or work with a specialist partner. The decision should follow from what the customer values and what the business can deliver profitably.
The assumption to retire is that control of the machine’s data is enough to secure the service relationship. The customer may still choose the manufacturer. It should be because the service is worth choosing.