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Tony Affuso
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer |
Today’s economy is accelerating manufacturers’ changing view of after-sales service. Increasingly, it has become a strategic business issue for companies looking to develop consistency in their revenue, gain a competitive edge and secure customer loyalty.
Research has shown that many discrete manufacturers now garner 10 percent to 40 percent of their revenue from after-sales service and that service profit margins for this type of service can be from 25 percent to 1000 percent higher than margins on product sales1. In some cases, servicing long life products (assets) can result in 2 to 5 times the revenue of the initial sale. In the aviation industry alone, the global market for aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul is expected to reach $55.2 billion by 2015.2
Manufacturers cannot afford to ignore their products once delivered to the customer. Whether direct service is the goal or simply ensuring that a customer or a third party can keep its products safe and functioning well, successful manufacturers need to support service with information created during product development. Research indicates that “Best in class performers are 2.9 times as likely as average performers to have deployed configuration management solutions to support the service lifecycle."3 To gain maximum value from service functions, companies need to maintain uniform data access across a product’s full lifecycle, from design through production, installation and maintenance – a capability provided by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).
