In the last year we have seen an explosion in our societies understanding of the potential for connected devices. Driven mainly by the SMART phones and the ease of connection to the internet, just about everyone from your primary school kid to their grandmother is getting connected. And is it my imagination, but utter the words Big Data, Analytics and IoT and they all seem to nod ‘sagely’?

So with all this ‘wisdom’ in the world, it’s not surprising that in their struggle to differentiate, Service IT Solution providers have been falling over themselves to describe capabilities that manage knowledge, bring transparency and leverage big data. And in fairness this is not just talk. The capabilities on offer are impressive, as Field Service, Parts Management, CRM technologies are increasingly integrated into seamless end to end solutions. Indeed this trend is driving the next wave of consolidation in the industry. Led by PTC with their acquisition of Axeda and ThingWorx, solution providers are looking to develop the technology platforms to enable Remote Services. Another example of the big bets being made is GE’s multi million dollar investment in their Predix platform for Machine to Machine (M2M) communications. The effect of this hype has been to dramatically raise the profile of the potential value connected technologies could have on industry.

But I am troubled by this jargon and thinking.

In my mind these technologies and capabilities have no value if you do not do anything with the information they create.

Yet we are all being told that if you don’t have an Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, you are dead! No, I believe we have it all wrong when we talk about IoT. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion we should be thinking about the iotS…

S for Service Thinking.

In simple terms ‘Service Thinking’ is the culture or even passionate belief that value is only created by applying your technical or business knowledge to improve whatever it is your customer is trying to achieve.

But to do this professionals will start to adopt new ways of thinking and I am afraid new jargon. We will hear more of ‘Co-Creation’ & ‘Service Experience’. Metric will be biased towards outcomes rather than operational inputs. ‘Continuous improvement via learning’, which is a very much part of the service psyche, will enable companies to find new ways to ‘run, transform and innovate’ their business.

Indeed this type of thinking is not just limited to field service. Already many really profitable manufacturing companies have moved away from a Product Dominant focus to a Service Centric approach. These companies focus on value creation in their customer’s business leveraging their technology and inherent know how to earn better than average margins.

But the more you think about it, the more you realise that it is our Imagination that is now the limiting factor. Frankly the technology is out there to do more or less what ever you want. The big gap is our understanding of what these technologies can do for our business.

Indeed it is Service Thinking and Imagination, which companies must master if they are to reap the full rewards offered by these new technologies.

(Article adapted from Nick’s personal blog www.productServiceInnovation.com and on Field Service News)