I've been writing and speaking about servitization as the big global transformation theme in multiple posts and events. You know the examples of Netflix which servitized the movie experience and Rolls Royce which started selling flight hours instead of jet engines. But what is the next thing?
Some people say that data will be at the core of the next wave and I am prone to follow the thinking. Let's explore the interesting concept of datatization presented by Schüritz et al in the article "Datatization as the Next Frontier of Servitization - Understanding the Challenges for Transforming Organizations."
Datatization
datatization: the innovation of an organization's capabilities and processes to change its value proposition by utilizing data analytics
According to research only a small portion of organizations actually augment their (external) value propositions by applying data analytics and thus in fact ride the “third wave” of analytics.
This may either be achieved by:
enriching products or services with data, i.e. “wrapping” data services around them or
by creating completely new stand-alone data-driven services
Both, the design of new data-driven services or data-enriched products & services are by no means trivial. Any organization will have to develop capabilities to be able to reap the benefits of data-driven innovation, in particular when changing the value proposition.
Stepping from service-oriented organization to datatized organization requires some changes in various aspects of your business. Below is a very nice and clear overview of the changes needed in 6 categories: strategy, network, customer relationship, development practice, skills & capabilities, and revenue stream.
One optional direction
Of course, the term datatization is not widely acknowledged and even less discussed at the moment. This is one of the optional directions we might be going next according to academic research. How long it takes and what are the practical implications, remains to be seen.
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