SERVICES WITH EVERYTHING

SERVICES WITH EVERYTHING

The Services Spectrum.

The ICT-Enabled Digital transformation of services

The Services Transformations Unfolding

The transformation of services with ICT tools is dramatic, pervasive, and far-reaching. Activities are transformed, firms are turning to services in pursuit of value, and traditional boundaries are breaking down between products and services, manufacturing and services, and traditional industrial sectors.

The Algorithmic Revolution Transforms Activities

With the Algorithmic Revolution, tasks underlying services can be transformed into formalizable, codifiable, computable processes with clearly defined rules for their execution.
Bank ATMs
Existing activities, when converted into computable processes, often take on new purposes and create new forms of value.

Repositioning Services to Avoid Commoditization

Many products face intense price competition.
Firms see services as the solution to creating defensible positions in markets. They use them in a variety of ways:
Firms’ hardware offerings are increasingly enhanced in value by ICT-enabled services offerings.
Some firms go further, shifting their core businesses from selling products towards offering services, often delivered via ICT networks: IBM, for example, transformed itself from a product company in which services support provided competitive advantage, to a services company embodying products in its offerings.

Products themselves can be transformed into services when delivered via ICT networks.
Products can become portals to services, or are embedded in services.
Conventional sectoral distinctions are collapsing into “value domains.”