Read REES researcher Christian Kowalkowski’s book providing guidance on how to shift your business from goods-centric to a service- and solution-savvy model.
In today’s competitive global markets, simply making a great product is not companies must start to strategically compete through service and innovative solutions for business customers. Drumming up a few new service ideas and crafting commercial brochures won’t do the trick. Instead, companies must transform their business and make change stick.
The book provides guidance on how to shift your business from a goods-centric to a service and solution-savvy model—and grow your company in today’s extremely competitive environment. The authors’ proprietary twelve-step roadmap to profitable service growth will help you break out of a narrow product-centric logic and discover how to
- determine if your company is “fit-for-service,”
- make the most of your existing services,
- innovate and create value-added services & customer solutions beyond your products
- embed a true service-centric culture in your organization,
- drive change and align your service strategy with corporate goals,
- transform your product-centric sales force into a service-savvy sales organization,
- design an organizational structure that promotes service growth, and
- align your interests with distributors and partners.
The twelve-step roadmap is based on rigorous research and long-standing experience working with businesses. While the path might be fraught with challenges and roadblocks, our road map provides clear directions for how your company can profit from services in business markets. In each chapter, we introduce hands-on frameworks and tools that you can apply to your firm. End-of-chapter questions allow you to assess your strengths and weaknesses at each stage of this journey. Working through each of our twelve chapters will help you craft and implement your own service-growth strategy.
Kowalkowski and Ulaga have worked with hundreds of managers in industrial and professional services companies, conducted research projects, led executive workshops, and published numerous articles in scientific and managerial journals, including Journal of Marketing and Harvard Business Review, among others. Here, they share their lessons learned from successful business case studies and years of extensive research.
Source: Kowalkowski, C. and W. Ulaga (2017). “Service Strategy in Action: A Practical Guide for Growing Your B2B Service and Solution Business”, Scottsdale, AZ: Service Strategy Press.
In short Service Strategy in Action A Practical Guide for Growing Your B2B Service and Solution Bu