Having returned from the Advanced Services Partnership Winter Roundtable 2023, it is time for some reflection!
For those who don’t know about the Advanced Services Partnership, within The Advanced Services Group, we commonly refer to this as ‘The Partnership’. It is a consortium of non-competing, product-led businesses that have the same ambition – to compete through outcome-based services. These businesses are partners to each other in the journey of servitization, and partners to us. We work with them year after year to help them drive their servitization initiatives while simultaneously learning from their experiences and informing their practice. They all are pioneers in their industry and we develop cutting-edge intellectual property with them and for them. The Winter Roundtable 2023, hosted by one of the partners – Tetra Pak, was one of the three roundtables we will organise along with many other collective and individual activities.
The partners have been progressing through the servitization journey and have reached a stage we call ‘Expansion’. This is when a business has built enough internal momentum and customer engagement that they are ready to commercialise and scale the most suitable advanced service they have designed and tested. During this roundtable, the focus was clearly on understanding the key challenges in the ‘Expansion’ stage. Some broad questions were discussed such as “Why, When, and Whom to partner with?”, “How to estimate market sizes for such complex services?”, “Which resources and competencies should we develop and acquire?”. Some effective strategies for dealing with these challenges were shared by partners. Some clear frameworks and tools were presented by us to help the partners make more informed decisions. Overall, the three days were packed with activities, discussions, and Fika (as they should be!) But something particularly stood out for me – ‘Coalitions’.
What is so special about coalitions? All the partners were building on the great successes of developing internal coalitions. These coalitions include cross-functional leaders, several levels within business units, and sometimes multiple national divisions. Large businesses are notorious for their organisational rigidity and resistance to change. But these hurdles become even more obvious when servitization initiatives are being led by one or two people and do not have a coalition of several key decision-makers and managers. Such initiatives can often get stuck in the early stages – Exploration and Engagement, or even get abandoned.
The businesses that had several ‘Servitization Champions’ to advocate for its value, generate board-level buy-in, and design structured servitization programmes have been most successful in reaching the Expansion stage. As a result of this business-wide engagement, there is excitement and of course, expectation. But with that also comes commitment. The partners demonstrated a clear commitment to scaling and commercializing their advanced services. This commitment was in the form of budgets and talent recruitment to accelerate their journeys. By sharing these commitments, the partners made these discussions quite exciting. We weren’t talking about what the businesses could ‘theoretically’ provide to their customers. We were discussing how they could ‘practically’ make advanced services a reality.
Personally, it is an absolute pleasure to be in the same room as these Servitization Champions from different pioneering businesses! We were joined by guest organisations too, that wish to join the Advanced Services Partnership and were able to experience the value first-hand. And finally, it is also a moment of great satisfaction as we see the research that our team conducts over several years becoming embedded in the language, thinking, and strategies of these large businesses. I can’t wait to see how these partners grow over the next few years.
The Advanced Services Partnership is open to new partners. If you want to discuss how you can be a part, speak to the chairman – Tim Baines, or me. If you want to hear more about our work in general, don’t hesitate to send us a message!