Kai Uwe Beecken

Offer: Business model consulting for Digital Services in the IoT environment

I worked at Microsoft for about ten years in the field of "Internet of Things" or IoT, supporting renowned companies in implementing digital services in the IoT environment. My experience shows that many German companies are very good at the technical implementation of networked devices and machines, but often struggle with the commercial exploitation of the corresponding digital services. Example: Many machine manufacturers offer a service for "Predictive Maintenance" but have problems convincing their existing customer base to purchase this service. Often, this is simply due to the incentives for sales employees, which ultimately result in a pure revenue share. The sales employee benefits much more from selling a machine for €700,000 than from the additional business of the digital service, which is offered as a subscription for €5,000 per year.

By using the Business Model Canvas from Strategyzer (see appendix), one can very well define the commercial requirements and framework conditions that will make a digital IoT service successful. This creates the potential not only to accompany the technical implementation at the customer's site but also to drive the necessary organizational transformation in areas such as incentive models in sales, new partnerships with implementation partners for automation solutions, changing customer relationships from a one-time transaction to a continuous service, up to completely new business models, e.g., offering previously physical goods as a service: instead of selling a packaging machine, offering a service that is billed per packaged item.