One of the biggest challenges that most product organizations face is to constantly innovate and be a step ahead of their competitors.
Most of us tend to continue to remain in the boundaries of more features/functions or newer products, etc. Most of these changes will work for you for sometime, but soon your competitors will catch up. Then the whole cycle starts again.
One way to break this cycle is to package your product into a service. Though this may seem a very simple idea, it is very difficult to execute. And precisely for this reason, the pay-off for this is much higher.
Some examples:
– From selling cars to renting out cars (BMW is currently exploring this model in California).
– From selling movie tickets to selling monthly/annual cineplex viewer memberships (I am hoping that someone start this soon).
– From selling an ERP to managing business back-bones (for a piece of revenue). More on this in a subsequent post.
– From selling a home to renting a serviced apartment (this movement is gaining momentum in the big cities).
– From selling airline tickets to selling in-air concerts/exhibitions or selling private time with preferred people.
– From selling a 4 year college education, selling a life-long membership to learn (with a monthly fee post graduation and the option of coming back to college for a specific course over lifetime). More on this in a subsequent post.
Though you might think that this is not possible for your product as yours is a unique product, I can guarantee that it is definitely possible and someone somewhere is already working on the idea.
Same thing goes with services as well. The moment you are able to take a service, productize it, you are suddenly able to scale.
Do share your thoughts so that we can discuss this further.
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PS: Listen to Anthony Mark Johnson, sharing his experience on “Transforming a Telecom Provider of Products to a Telecom Provider of Service”, leading to transformation.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy70yVyT3bM]
