"Any industrial manufacturer that has not awakened to the fact that it must become a service business is in serious peril today." Steve Pazol not only lives by that warning penned by Harbor Research, but that message also motivated him to be a founder of nPhase, a smart services company recently acquired by Qualcomm Inc.
In the 2006 purchase of nPhase, Qualcomm substantially energized its ability to help manufacturing companies add the valuable service component to strengthen their business strategies. Qualcomm, a provider of business-to-business wireless enterprise applications, views smart services as a significant wave of business evolution poised to transform the manufacturing segment of the economy.
"In this competitive climate, 'smart services' are uniquely positioned to transform the product value chain just as monumentally and irrevocably as the Internet did to commerce," says Pazol. "In the early 1990s knowledge of the Internet was growing, but very few executives appreciated how the Internet enabling their operations would change them." The result, he says, has changed the roster of leading companies as well as the way business is conducted.
His early focus was on providing manufacturers with the ability to connect their products and add a service value. "We developed our nPhase methodology over years of working closely with our customers through the early adopter phase of the market and into mainstream industrial applications. The machine-to-machine (M2M) market continues to grow and connected products are becoming more and more common."
He says nPhase's evolution into Qualcomm's Global Smart Services represents his natural progression to help businesses leveraging technology to move from reactive modes to proactive business models.
He describes smart services as an enabler, helping companies such as ABB Robotics, Gardner Denver, Xerox, Siemens and John Deere evolve a continuing service model for their products. He notes that best-in-class OEMS are looking beyond product-based sales alone for differentiation, profit margin and growth. By connecting with their products in the field, a very proactive service model can be established. Even mobile assets such as over-the-road freight haulers can be monitored as a supply chain and logistics solution. OmniTRACS, Qualcomm's fleet management system, was introduced in 1991. The specialty of nPhase is fixed asset telemetry, adds Pazol.
Smart Services in 25 Words or Less
Smart services are differentiated post-sale product support capabilities, enabled by wirelessly capturing and analyzing real-time product performance information. |
Significant gains are possible in automotive and general industry applications. For example, ABB Robotics is exploiting an opportunity to dramatically reduce robot downtime -- as much as 70% -- with a Qualcomm smart service approach. Service costs came down by eliminating the need for on-site troubleshooting and coordinating spare parts and field technician dispatch. Production capacity increased while programming time was reduced, ABB reports.
View article on one page