Circular and Sharing Economy
Though some Apps have recently emerged, for example for sharing construction or other equipment, the industrial B2B space is quite open for service providers with innovative ideas and good technology. The economics of the industry mean that first mover advantage with a powerful value proposition is crucial. We help companies active in this space research markets, understand customer buying behavior, define business models and develop strategy. We further help them design the customer journey, gain access to anchor customers and implement and optimize a service delivery system.
Powerful Economics driving “Sharing” Apps
The sharing economy is about using technology to improve utilization and productive use of services, products or asssets through sharing among multiple users, concurrently or sequentially. It’s modern origins probably go back to the founding of Ebay and Craigslist in the mid ’90s and the start of recirculation of goods. Since then numerous applications (Apps) have emerged, ranging from services provided by people, to hospitality, vehicles or industrial equipment. The power of the sharing economy can be seen in the valuations of companies like Uber or Airbnb, which in very few years have exceeded those of their more traditional brethren.
Sharing Apps have powerful economics, as the increase in utilization reduces deadweight costs and unit prices and expands markets. Furthermore, as native digital businesses, they display “network effects”: the value of the network increases with each additional connection or node, both for the new user and the already existing users, while the (marginal) cost of adding another customer or providing another unit of service is minimal. This fuels rapid growth and “winner takes all markets”: the top players have supersized market shares and small differences in skills can mean large differences in returns. They exist because technology has increased the size of the market that can be served by a single company. This implies that there will be few winners, therefore investment risk for industry incumbents in digital transformation increases. The result is binary: Companies either win or lose and there is nothing much in the middle.
Insights and Success Stories
Making “Trusted Advisor” Real
For years, “Trusted Advisor” has been the go-to phrase whenever service leaders describe the relationship they want with customers. It’s used in sales kick-offs, service strategy decks, and job descriptions for everyone from field engineers to key account managers. The trouble is that the more a phrase gets used, the less it tends to mean. Ask ten people in your business what a trusted advisor actually does differently, day to day, and you’ll likely get ten different answers — usually some version of “being really good at customer service.”
That ambiguity is a problem, because for suppliers of industrial equipment, components and solutions, the trusted advisor relationship isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between being treated as a replaceable vendor and being the partner customers call before they’ve even finished defining the problem. So it’s worth being precise. We define a trusted advisor as:
A service professional whose relationship with a client goes beyond basic transactional expertise. They act as a long-term confidant, providing holistic guidance to help customers make critical, informed decisions — operational or strategic. The goal, through that relationship, is to add more value to both parties through collaboration.
Two words matter most in that definition: “both parties.” This isn’t altruism, and it isn’t really about being liked. Done properly, it’s a commercial discipline that benefits the customer’s operation and your order book at the same time. This article explores how that plays out in practice — and what it actually takes to build it into an organisation rather than just hope for it.
Why I Keep Coming Back to the Si2 Service Leaders Network Summit
Why does Martina Krengel from Georg Sahm keep coming back to the Si2 Summit? She says that Si2 has created a trusted environment for open, honest discussions with peers facing similar challenges. I gained practical, immediately applicable insights, valuable connections, and fresh perspectives from real-world experiences. The strong sense of community, shared learning, and collaborative problem-solving help’s me as a leader to improve faster and create greater value.
Making “Trusted Advisor” Real
For years, “Trusted Advisor” has been the go-to phrase whenever service leaders describe the relationship they want with customers. It’s used in sales kick-offs, service strategy decks, and job descriptions for everyone from field engineers to key account managers. The trouble is that the more a phrase gets used, the less it tends to mean. Ask ten people in your business what a trusted advisor actually does differently, day to day, and you’ll likely get ten different answers — usually some version of “being really good at customer service.”
That ambiguity is a problem, because for suppliers of industrial equipment, components and solutions, the trusted advisor relationship isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between being treated as a replaceable vendor and being the partner customers call before they’ve even finished defining the problem. So it’s worth being precise. We define a trusted advisor as:
A service professional whose relationship with a client goes beyond basic transactional expertise. They act as a long-term confidant, providing holistic guidance to help customers make critical, informed decisions — operational or strategic. The goal, through that relationship, is to add more value to both parties through collaboration.
Two words matter most in that definition: “both parties.” This isn’t altruism, and it isn’t really about being liked. Done properly, it’s a commercial discipline that benefits the customer’s operation and your order book at the same time. This article explores how that plays out in practice — and what it actually takes to build it into an organisation rather than just hope for it.
Why I Keep Coming Back to the Si2 Service Leaders Network Summit
Why does Martina Krengel from Georg Sahm keep coming back to the Si2 Summit? She says that Si2 has created a trusted environment for open, honest discussions with peers facing similar challenges. I gained practical, immediately applicable insights, valuable connections, and fresh perspectives from real-world experiences. The strong sense of community, shared learning, and collaborative problem-solving help’s me as a leader to improve faster and create greater value.
