Creating Growth With Services

Faced with saturation of their core product markets, companies in search of growth are increasingly turning to services. A few companies have enjoyed success with this approach. Not all product manufacturers have been so fortunate. A systematic approach to creating services-led growth can help managers of product companies improve the odds of success. Companies must begin by redefining their markets in terms of customer activities and customer outcomes instead of products and services. By mapping the customer-activity chain and relating the map to a service-opportunity matrix, the managers can systematically explore opportunities for new services in four directions: 1. temporal expansion, 2. spatial expansion, 3. temporal reconfiguration, and 4. spatial reconfiguration. Equally important, they must assess the pitfalls and risks that these opportunities represent, and another matrix - on risk mitigation - serves as a tool for that task.