Case Study: Service contract design

Company

Problem

The client is a special machine manufacturer and an important player in its industry. In the past, the company has placed a strong focus on the sale of machines and systems and has generally operated its service business more reactively than actively. This resulted in a service revenue share of just 15% despite a comparatively strong spare parts business.

With ambitious growth plans for the relevant business area, the volume of the service business should now also be significantly increased. The active sale of service contracts was identified as a key driver for this targeted growth. An initial attempt to open up the market with an aggregated contract portfolio failed. A more modular service contract portfolio was to be developed, with which it would be possible to better adapt to the very different customer groups on the sales side. We were commissioned to define the content of this contract concept and develop it to market maturity.

Approach

Result

First, a benchmarking study was carried out in the industry and related mechanical engineering sectors in order to gain a better understanding of the contract offers in this particular segment of mechanical engineering. In addition, around 15 of the client's customers were interviewed in order to better understand their needs with regard to service in general and service agreements in particular.

On this basis, a future-proof service contract portfolio was developed and validated with selected customers. The contents of the contract levels and contract modules were detailed until they were ready for implementation and the necessary sales, service and handling processes were defined together with the customer. In addition, a pricing calculator was developed with which the client, which comes from the special machine construction sector, was able to calculate customer- and line-specific offer prices.

The contract portfolio was successfully established on the market and can now be purchased by customers.