Companies can expect a revenue boost of more than 14 per cent by automatically collecting and analyzing service data related to industrial assets, according to a new global research report.

Additionally, for every $1 spent on successful service data collection and usage, companies expect a return of $4.44 – approaching five times the initial investment, said the research, “The Rise of Asset and Service Data Gravity,” commissioned by ServiceMax from GE Digital and conducted by Vanson Bourne.

It surveyed 600 IT decision makers and field service management leaders across manufacturing, energy and power, oil and gas, transportation, distribution and logistics, telecoms and medical/healthcare regionally in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, as well as globally in the US, UK, France and Germany.

The study found that out of the estimated 187,470 field service work orders conducted on average each year, 15,635 (8.34 per cent) of them remain unaccounted for within organizations, representing millions in lost revenue.

The study also found that Generation Z, those born between the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, will be the last generation to remember a product-based economy. As the trend to bundle services with products and the appetite for outcome-based contracts and business models continues, 77 per cent of those surveyed believe Gen Z will be the last generation to experience an economy dominated by products alone without any embedded services or outcomes.

“Businesses are moving to outcome-based models where monetizing service – and harnessing field service data – is critical to success,” said Ali Saleh, chief commercial officer, GE Digital Middle East, Africa & Turkey.

“In a world focused on service, the asset is the most important thing, and everything revolves around it. This includes uptime, availability, mitigating downtime, asset estate insight, performance metrics, and supply chain.

“As an important piece of digitization, service data holds untapped insights for almost every line of business – from sales, R&D, IT, finance, and marketing. It also has a huge impact on Overall Equipment Effectiveness in terms of performance, capacity, quality, and uptime. The rise of this focus on the asset and service data is changing the way businesses view and monetize their service operations,” he added.

Almost all 600 of the organizations surveyed (99 per cent) said that other parts of the business outside of service can benefit from both the automation and better usage of service data. And 85 per cent said service data should be central to decision making, while 87 per cent believed it will have a positive impact on their ability to remain competitive.

“Businesses are expected to have value conversations with customers, rather than product discussions,” added Saleh. “As the growing value of service data is increasingly recognized outside of the service department, it is best exploited through a digital platform approach, rather than piece by piece to enable every line of business to positively benefit from its insights.” – TradeArabia News Service