The Advanced Services Partnership is an industry consortium of multinational companies and exclusive acceleration programme for manufacturers aspiring to grow through advanced services. Executives benefit from our cutting-edge tools and techniques, networking with like-minded business leaders, as well as a dedicated Servitization Mentor.
What is Servitization Mentorship? It is one of the vital support forms available to the members of the Advanced Services Partnership. Today, we are speaking with Dr. Parikshit Naik, ASG’s Commercial Director and Servitization Mentor, about his role and experiences.
What is a Servitization Mentor?
ASG’s Servitization Mentors are experts with deep knowledge of servitization who help leaders achieve service-led growth by implementing ASG’s proprietary methodology called the Servitization Route Planner. The mentor is also the go-to contact for the leaders to tap into the vast resources and expertise available within the partnership and connect with other members to collaborate and learn from each other. For the past three years, I have been the dedicated Servitization Mentor for Baxi Heating, guiding various business leaders in exploring and experimenting with different service solutions.
What do you bring to the role?
From my perspective, mentorship in the Advanced Services Partnership requires a holistic understanding of the ‘What-Why-How’ of servitization and a range of skills and competencies relevant to the manufacturer’s context. I became a mentor for Baxi Heating as we began a £1.7m project to create the world’s first Digital Servitization Demonstrator. This project and Baxi’s membership in the Advanced Services Partnership were deeply aligned. I was lucky to join at such an exciting time where I brought my expertise from my PhD to exploit the power of digital technology to accelerate advanced services.
Over the following three years, I enabled business model innovation in Baxi by exploring the viability of Heat-as-a-Service and similar services using ASG’s proprietary tools, such as the Service-led Business Model Blueprint, which I have co-authored. I engaged with over twenty managers, senior managers and directors to best align the servitization initiative with the business’s growth strategy. It was exciting to help Baxi Heating explore the value of Heat-as-a-Service as the future of the services business, identify the pathways to exploit connected assets and how to collaborate with other stakeholders such as installers and utility providers to deliver new services. More recently, I also worked with Baxi to understand the UK government’s regulations to decarbonise the heating industry and how it could positively and negatively affect advanced services.
The best part of mentoring?
For me, the best part of servitization mentoring is the innovative engagement with the different stakeholders in the manufacturing organisation to develop a singular vision for service-led growth. Whether that is by facilitating workshops on new service design and business model innovation or forming communication plans to educate more colleagues about how advanced services will benefit every part of the organisation, collaborating with forward-thinking leaders has been highly rewarding. The opportunity to learn about and develop expertise in digitally-enabled services for the HVAC industry has been a great bonus.
Parikshit’s Top Tip for Manufacturers
Innovation goes beyond creating new products! You are missing a trick if you don’t have an innovation team, and even worse if your innovation team is only responsible for new products in the R&D department. Service innovation and business model innovation require equal time, resources, and funding investment. The result is a more sustainable competitive advantage than any new product could ever deliver.
Top Challenge for Manufacturers
Servitization is not supposed to be a lonely journey. Picture yourself in a Lord of the Rings film- can you imagine being Frodo Baggins and not being able to rely on the wisdom, tools and support of Gandalf? Sounds ridiculous! Then why must you embark on organisational transformations alone? Find yourself the right mentor with knowledge of servitization and advanced services who will also be an honest critic of your progress and discourage poor shortcuts. There will be many who will tell you that advanced services are just a subscription model combining products and maintenance. A well-informed mentor will lay out a roadmap of how you can create the most valuable and true advanced services without downplaying the challenges that lie ahead. Don’t forget the Fellowship (back to the Lord of the Rings)! Frodo wouldn’t have accomplished his mission without the learning and support of others on the same journey. In real life, other businesses like you are on the servitization journey, too. You can learn from each other and collaborate for better outcomes. They don’t need to be from your industry – even better to gain different perspectives (like the elves and the dwarves). Find that Fellowship and engage with it.