Productservice

Productservice describes a business approach that combines products and services into a single offering. It is often used to refer to a product-service system (PSS), where a company provides a function or outcome rather than simply selling a tangible good. This shifts the value proposition from ownership of a product to access to its functionality, often through leasing, usage-based pricing, or performance guarantees.

In practice, productservice includes services such as maintenance, warranty, training, spare parts, and data-enabled optimization, bundled with physical goods or software. Examples include equipment providers offering uptime guarantees, manufacturers offering maintenance programs, or software delivered as a service with updates and support. The trend, known as servitization, emphasizes delivering outcomes like availability or production capacity.

Business models range from subscription and pay-per-use to bundled guarantees and outcome-based pricing. Benefits include new revenue streams, closer customer relationships, better resource efficiency, and environmental advantages from longer asset life and recycling. Challenges include aligning product and service design, managing pricing complexity, maintaining service quality, and investing in data analytics and field operations.

Key considerations for implementing productservice include organizational change, cross-functional collaboration, digital infrastructure for monitoring and remote support, lifecycle thinking, and metrics that cover both product performance and service profitability. The approach is associated with the circular economy and sustainability, supporting longer lifecycles and shared utilization of assets.