Offering comprehensive solutions to the professional printing sector: The O₂ case
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to add to the conversation around integrated solution delivery in the capital goods sector. Based on a thorough case study, the paper offers a framework for delivering solutions that can assist businesses in the professional printing sector in developing, delivering, and pricing integrated solutions. The example of O₂ indicates that in order to be successful as a solution provider, it is necessary to build the capacity to offer highly customized service logic-based solutions while maintaining the capacity to effectively deliver standardized goods logic-based solutions. Therefore, it implies that achieving such a competence can be facilitated by using several delivery strategies to cater to clients with various needs.
Highlights
An extensive case study serves as the foundation for the paper. It offers a framework for developing, delivering, and pricing integrated solutions for the professional printing sector. Being able to offer both logic-based and service logic-based solutions is essential for success as a solution provider. Achieving this competence can be facilitated by using several delivery strategies to cater to clients with diverse wants. A specific amount of client input should be “accepted” by each strategy, and customers should be charged based on the input that is accepted.
Introduction
Businesses in the capital-goods sector are being encouraged to recast themselves as solution providers due to a widespread decline in profit margins and rising consumer demands [1]. As a result, products-centered business models—which only entail the sale of goods plus after-sales services—are becoming outdated due to service-centered business models, which are based on the delivery of highly customized and integrated solutions [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], and [8]. However, selling items and services is not the same as offering integrated solutions. In reality, it calls for the adoption of a new, relationship-based, customer-focused business model [9], [10], which in turn calls for the introduction of organizational principles, expertise, and procedures that are novel to the manufacturer [11]. Therefore, entering the integrated-solutions industry is risky and may have a negative impact on a company’s financial performance, despite the potential it may present [3], [6], [12], [13], and [14]. In the past ten years, several authors have put forth reference models [15], [16], [17], and even tools [18] under the umbrella of service engineering to aid in the design and development of new services as well as the integrated development of hardware (HW), software (SW), and service components or modules [17], [19], [20], [21]. However,
Although service engineering has adopted elements of service-operations management [22], there are not many contributions in the literature that particularly examine how these elements are incorporated into tailored solutions and maintained over time. But this is a really important topic. In fact, businesses are frequently asked to quickly offer highly customized solutions based on components whose essential structures have already been developed, particularly in capital-goods industries like IT and telecom [23], [24]. Additionally, organizational units (such as national branches) that are close to the client but have little or no control over the creation of the HW/SW/service components frequently handle the customization and integration of these solutions. As a result, this procedure requires more time and is typically carried out in centralized R&D departments [4], [22]. The delivery of integrated solutions in the capital-goods sector is a topic that this study adds to [1], [23], [24], [25], and [26]. The case study of O₂, a well-known international business in the professional printing sector, serves as the foundation for the article.
An intriguing context for researching an integrated-solutions company is this industry. Manufacturers of professional printing equipment have significantly improved their system integration, application development, and consulting capabilities during the past 20 years. Additionally, their investments in the creation of value-added services have been steadily increasing in recent years [27], [28], [29], and [30]. Due to the slowdown of the building sector in both Europe and the United States, the global economic crisis is in fact having a significant impact on the industry [31], particularly in the wide-format market. As a result, major industry participants are responding to the issue by incorporating print requirements into a comprehensive ICT offering and combining services and solutions. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the approach used by a major player in the professional printing sector to develop its solutions might offer helpful insights to businesses that are still in the early stages of the shift from products to solutions.
An overview of the methodology is presented after a survey of the literature on the idea of integrated solutions. The case study is then given, and the study’s conclusions and limitations are examined.
Snippets of sections
Review of the literature
A clear, exact description of the idea of integrated-solution providing is needed [26], notwithstanding the abundance of literature on subjects like solution selling [23], [24], [25], PSS [3], [32], [33], [34], [35], and servitization [3], [36]. Nevertheless, the definitions found in the literature “fail to present real-life examples of integrated solutions” and are “very ambiguous” [1]. Nordin and Kowalkowski [25] offer a conceptual framework based on a thorough evaluation of the literature.
Methodology
A single in-depth case study was used as the research technique in this study due to the immaturity of research on solutions offered [25], [51].
Discussion
According to the O₂ scenario, a successful solution provider in the professional printing sector must be able to provide standard solutions on a transactional basis (goods logic) and co-create highly customized solutions with customers (service logic). This scenario so validates the conclusions of Windahl and Lackemond [1], who propose that businesses should comprehend whether and how they can interact rather than “disregard or just focus on one logic.
Conclusions
The case of Océ suggests that succeeding as a solution provider does not necessarily require, as most of the literature recommends, shifting from solely providing standardised goods logic-based solutions to solely offering customised service logic-based solutions. Instead, it puts forward how companies may need to develop the ability to operate using both logics and to adopt a different logic to address customers with different needs. Furthermore, the case suggests that developing such a
Acknowledgements
Geert Rongen, Johan Bossong, Carlo Ruggeri, Annemarie Wolters-Van den Hurk, and the ASAP Service Management Forum are all appreciated by the author. Filippo Visintin is a research fellow at the Information-Based Industrial Services Laboratory (IBIS Lab, www.ibis.unifi.it) and an assistant professor of service management at the University of Florence. He is the head of the ASAP Service Management Forum’s (ASAP SMF, www.asapsmf.org) Digital Systems Section. His current areas of interest in research are hospital operations management and product service systems.