Research

Our research

The Center Smart Service develops solutions for successful digital business in the manufacturing Industry. It does so in projects together with leading Industry companies. As a result of the projects, best practices are identified, analysed and used to derive practicle solutions for the project partner. As one of our project partner, you will gain exclusive insight in the methods and strategies of leading companies and profit from the expertise of international universities leading in the area of Industrie 4.0 and smart services.

Sales Excellence of Digital Products & Services

Consortial Project
Kick-Off: Q4/22
Project finish: Q2/23

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As part of the innovation project, we are working together in a cross-sector consortium of around 15 industrial companies to develop strategies, measures and methods to increase success in the sale of digital products & services by at least 50%!

You will get:
– deep insights into numerous successful practices
– your individually developed sales guide including new sales methods
– already proven methods and procedures for practical application in everyday sales situations

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Active projects

Pricing of Digital Products

Consortial project
Kick-off: October 26th, 2020
Project finish: Q3/2021

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Adequate pricing is essential for the success of a digital product. Until now, industrial companies have had little experience in managing the price of digital products, which is why they do not contribute to the success of their business. Create measurable success with us for the pricing of your digital products!

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Smart Products

Consortial Benchmarking
Kick-off: September 22th, 2021
Project completion: September 2022

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Smart Products enable companies, to analyze the product usage, innovate and provide data-driven services, like weak point analysis. Let’s meet the technical and organizational challenges of smart products together.

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Indirect Sales

Consortial Project
Kick-Off: December 10th, 2021
Project finish: Q4/22

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However, digital products present new challenges to the previously well-established structures of manufacturer, dealer and service partner as well as customer. Together with you, we want to tackle these challenges and build a successful sales network for the future.

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Completed projects

Customer Insights

Consortial Benchmarking
Kick-off: 21.11.2019
Project finish: 22.03.2020

Customer demands: If you try to meet them, you are already one step ahead of the competitors. If you can identify customer demands by conducting your own data analyses, you have an even greater competitive advantage! The procedure that can help you gain valuable information to use in the competition for happy customers is called Customer Insights.

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Subscription Business

Consortial Benchmarking
Kick-off: 28.05.2019
Project finish: Q1 2021

Subscription business models make it possible to transfer the technological possibilites of Industrie 4.0 into measurable success. Join our latest benchmarking, become a project partner and learn how companies use subscription businesses to increase their success, realise continuous innovations and establish a customer relationship and lasting customer loyalty.

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Industrial Machine Learning

Market Study
Kick-off: 28.01.2019
Project finish: 25.06.2019

How does Industrial Machine Learning work? What benefits does it offer? How do I chose a suitable provider? The market survey “Industrial Machine Learning” answered these questions. Manufacturing industries learned how to to identify new potential with the help of machine learning technology and choose the most suitable strategic machine learning partner. The survey is now finished.

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Sale of Smart Services

Consortial Project
Kick-off: February 2018
Project finish: February 2019

78 Solution elements organised in 8 topic clusters and structured into 4 different phases – that is the result of the consortial project on the topic of “Sale of Smart Services”. Are you curious to know more? Segmentation criteria, the quantification of a benefit promise in monetary values and the right way to chose a distribution channel – all of these were among the project results.

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Data-based services 2016/2017

Consortial Benchmarking
Kick-off: October 2016
Project finish: June 2017

This study looked into the reasons for success of data-based services. It also researched how succesful top performers differ from others regarding the development and offer of data-based services. The study initiator and 75 international providers of industrial data-based services took part in this study.

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Smart-Service-Check – Sprint I

We developed a tool that allows the evaluatio of a service provider´s smart service readiness in form of a maturity degree. This creates transparency on the Status Quo of a company and makes itpossible to identify focal points of activities and improvement potential. The project was carried out by the enrolled members of the Center Smart Service Community.

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Smart-Service-Check – Sprint II

Based on the results of the succesfull smart service check sprint I, company individual data-based services were developed. To do so, successful practices were researched and it was analysed and categorised how they differ in form and type. The results were used to derive generic types of data-based services and design blueprints for them.

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