acatech Maturity Index Smart Services

Smart services – an effective triad of product, service and customer-centric value  proposition – offer opportunities for manufacturing-focused companies to achieve differentiation and seize new market opportunities. As the still limited uptake of smart services shows, manufacturing companies face complex challenges in combining the building blocks of product, service and value proposition into sustainable and competitive smart services, developing and implementing successful business models and adapting organisationally to a smart service ethos. Even the big players will struggle to go it alone, but Germany as a centre for innovation also depends on its hidden champions – small and medium-sized companies.

This acatech STUDY – Maturity Index Smart Services presents a maturity model with six structural areas for transforming manufacturing-focused companies into smart service providers. In this model, progress towards establishing a smart service business is measured along six maturity levels, so enabling a successful transformation both practically and on a firm evidence basis. Using a specially developed toolkit, companies can be guided through the adoption of a smart service business.