Equipment-as-a-Service - Necessary Changes for Service-Based Business Models

Equipment as a Service (EaaS) business models have a usage or outcome based value proposition. To convince customers from the reliability of the EaaS offer trust mechanisms should be applied. Those trust mechanisms are manifold, based on technical-, organizational- or insurance-oriented solutions which usually are suitably combined with the focus on the customers’ needs and requirements. For many traditional machine builder and factory suppliers those trust mechanisms pose many challenges. Therefore cooperations are brought to life which connect business partners from different disciplines and complementary offers, i.e., technology providers such as IT, (I)IoT, telecommunication, sensory and AI as well as insurances and banks. Thus, when creating and delivering an EaaS business model a service vendor has to face substantial changes. This work focuses on elaborating and showing the necessary changes in organizations who head towards newly built or improved EaaS business models whilst considering to increase the customers’ trust in the service offerings and the building up of cooperative structures. To identify the necessary changes, a literature review has been conducted which led to a taxonomy of changes with five core topics. This was evaluated with companies which aim to add a value-based business model to their traditional transaction-based business model. The results of the literature review and the qualitative evaluation of the taxonomy are presented in this publication.