Value-generating components of business model and user journey

Guaranteed, defined quality is a fundamental requirement for many products and services on the part of customers and users. Quality assurance strategies that ensure quality in development, production, and also in operation are therefore increasingly gaining strategic importance. In this context, it is crucial for companies to invest sufficiently in quality, especially in those areas where a potential failure to meet customer and user needs would have the greatest negative impact or - to put it positively - where the greatest positive value can be created by ensuring quality along the customer experience￾chain.

Quality assurance for physical products and services Quality assurance therefore plays a central role both for purely physical products, such as a gearbox, and for pure services, such as the performance of a public transport operator.

In the case of physical products, quality must typically be ensured before delivery to the customer. Once delivered, the possibilities to influence the quality decrease. This can only be maintained during the service life if suitable downstream maintenance measures are carried out.

In the case of services, the focus is on the quality of the service received and thus directly on the customer experience. Service quality means the fulfillment of a certain degree of customer expectations by means of mostly intangible services. In this context, quality can be assessed on the basis of three dimensi￾ons:

1.  On the basis of the bidder's performance potential, such as his technical, organisational or personal skills, the following criteria must be met
2. On the basis of the actual production process or the relevant quality characteristics (such as speed or precision)
3. On the basis of the result after completion of the service provision

These three dimensions - potential, process and result - show that service quality is directly related to the individual expectations of each customer. Therefore, quality efforts make sense especially where business value can be maximized along the user journey.

Quality assurance for hybrid products
Bundles of physical products and services are becoming increasingly common in almost all industries: In product-service￾combinations, physical products are supplemented by a firmly integrated service component. This allows the customer￾s benefit to be maximized by providing a more comprehensive solution to the customer's problem (servi￾tization). For example, leasing a car often includes intangible benefits such as services and insurance in addition to the actual use of the vehicle. The addition of services to the physical product thus integrates the dimensions of service quality into the physical product. In this way, the quality perceived by the customer and the benefits are optimized over the car's usage cycle.

Hybri￾de products go one step further. These supplement product-ser￾vice combinations with IT components. To a certain extent, IT software and hardware are the glue that binds the physical product with the services in a complementary manner. In many cases, customer-specific added value in the sense of servitization can only be effectively achieved with IT: instead of lo￾cal and analog, the product and the customer experience can be influenced globally and digitally.

With regard to quality assurance, hybrid products or their IT components offer the possibility of measuring quality selectively, sequentially or continuously during use and, if necessary, of introducing measures to ensure it. This makes quality and maintenance an inherent part of the value proposition of a product.

Quality assurance and maintenance in classic business models
With a digital component and coordinated services, physical products can be transformed into hybrid products. Sensors, connectivity and software-based evaluation are prerequisites for business models in which quality assurance is to play a central and value-generating role.

Classically, maintenance strategies - as a bundle of downstream quality assurance measures - are assigned to the di￾mension "value chain" of a business model. The value chain describes those activities, resources￾cencies and skills that are necessary to manufacture and maintain a product or service.

In addition to productivity increases and cost optimization in this dimension, for example due to more effective and efficient use of equipment, vehicles or personnel, the value chain also opens up direct sales potential in connection with quantitative expansion of the product range due to increased availability.

Maintenance as a value-generating core element of business models
In addition to these fundamental effects, quality assurance and maintenance can create the conditions for innovative business models with more far-reaching value propositions and revenue mechanisms: Business models that focus on the actual use of the product ("pay per use"/"usage-based"), the actual performance of the product ("performance-based") or the actual availability of the product ("guaranteed availability").

In these business models, quality assurance and maintenance is not a marginal issue, but an integral part and a prerequisite for feasibility and customer acceptance. Maintenance ensures that the three dimensions of service quality - potential, process and result - have a positive impact on the customer's assumption of competence and the provider's promise of competence. Investment decisions in certain types of maintenance can thus be made on the basis of the potential
Establish business values along the user journey.

Predictive maintenance and the Internet of Things
With its ability to integrate physical things into the digital world and to maximize their "performance", the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a central role for business models that are based on the effective use, performance or availability of products. Predictive maintenance as the "supreme discipline of maintenance" can only be realized on a broad scale with the equipping or monitoring of physical things with sensors and the use of connectivity with software and digital services.

However, when planning downstream quality assurance, it is important to compare and evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of predictive maintenance with reactive, time-, usage- or condition-based maintenance. Investments in a higher level of maintenance maturity are only worthwhile if quality assurance generates sufficient value in relation to the business model and the assurance of a better customer experience.

In addition to technological considerations, the embedding of maintenance in the business model and the supporting contribution to the value proposition and the guarantee of the customer experience chain play a central role in the decision on the right maintenance mix.