Service

Facing increasing competition through globalization and short innovation cycles industry leaders need to include services in their innovation strategy. The WIN-model shows that combined strategies for product and service innovation are creating sustainable competitive advantages. Enhancing product offers with complex services and service solutions are long-term investments to sustain USPs. Integrated product and service innovation to create service solutions require deep understanding of customer needs. Delivering such services lead to close interaction with the customers which are not visible for competitors. To provide service solutions, services need to be included in the corporate innovation strategy. Services need to be driven by the C-suite. Great services will push the image and branding of your company and interaction with customers will push product innovation. A WIN-WIN situation!

CRM manages customer interactions in marketing, sales and service. Based on an empirical survey the barriers for product configuration software to support the sales process in the automation industry are presented. In this industry, CRM systems are currently primarily employed for the optimization of after-sales services.