{"id":1147,"date":"2011-12-02T16:28:51","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T14:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.invest-aura.com\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2025-03-17T11:19:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:19:18","slug":"are-you-a-product-a-solution-or-a-service-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/are-you-a-product-a-solution-or-a-service-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you a product, a solution or a service company?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, we have noticed something interesting.\u00a0\u00a0 Go to the web sites of the top telecom suppliers and check in which order the words \u201cproducts\u201d, \u201csolutions\u201d and \u201cservices\u201d appear there.<\/p>\n<p>We have done the check:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN): products, solutions, services<\/li>\n<li>Huawei: solutions, products, services<\/li>\n<li>Alcatel-Lucent (ALU): solutions, products, services<\/li>\n<li>IBM:\u00a0 solutions, services, products<\/li>\n<li>Cisco: products &amp; services<\/li>\n<li>Ciena: products &amp; services<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Interestingly, IBM is the only company that puts \u2018products\u2019 last. And NSN, ALU and Huawei seem to put a strong focus on \u2018solutions\u2019.\u00a0 But are they really \u2018solutions\u2019 companies?\u00a0 Well, not in the IBM sense.\u00a0Finally, Cisco and Ciena don\u2019t even talk about solutions, at least at the top level.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The truth is that it is really difficult to be a product company, a solution company and a service company all at the same time, because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the key success factors for a product business (hardware, software) are different from those in a solution business or in a service business<\/li>\n<li>the internal DNA of a product hardware, a product software, a solution company and a service company are very different<\/li>\n<li>last but not least, selling product, software, solution or services are also very different matters.\u00a0 So if you want to do it all, you might need different sales organisation and skills for your various business lines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the product hardware business, global market share matters a lot.\u00a0 You want to be as big as possible, and spread your R&amp;D costs over as many customers as possible. \u00a0To be profitable, your gross margin must be of the order of 50%, so that after deducting R&amp;D costs (15%-25% of revenues), Sales costs (15%-20%) and G&amp;A (5%-10%), you still have a chance to make a profit. In this kind of business, the king is called Cisco:\u00a0 for the year ending July 2010, Cisco has reported 64% gross margin, R&amp;D costs lower than 15% of revenues, Sales costs at about 22%, G&amp;A at 5% only.\u00a0 This gives you a net income, after tax, in the range of 15%-20%.\u00a0 Which is great for a product company.<\/p>\n<p>In the software business, things can even be brighter.\u00a0 Gross margin is virtually equal to 100%, so even if your costs of sales are 30%-40% of revenues, this still leaves another 60% to pay for your software development costs. \u00a0Look at Oracle: net Income is around 25%-30% of revenues.\u00a0 And this is after tax! \u00a0The order of magnitude is similar for Google.\u00a0 These companies are money-making machines.<\/p>\n<p>Service businesses on the other hand are very people intensive and don\u2019t scale much.\u00a0 Success is based on your ability to attract the best people and retain them, and develop deep customer understanding and long-term relationship.\u00a0 Half of the business revenues are typically spent on staff costs for the service delivery (e.g. maintenance, professional services staff), and another 30%-40% on selling services.\u00a0 So EBIT margins are typically 10%, but not necessarily much more.\u00a0 In the service business you don\u2019t necessarily have to be big; competition can be intense, as the barriers to entry are fairly low; but you can be profitable even with a low market share, as fixed costs are also low.\u00a0 They are millions of service companies out there that operate service businesses successfully.<\/p>\n<p>Yet again, the solution business requires different kind of skills. It is all about developing a comprehensive eco-system of product partners, develop the \u2018glue\u2019 (integration: software, services, processes) necessary to integrate those products into an end-to-end solution, understanding customer requirements and providing customers with the solution that best match their needs.\u00a0 There is no place for the \u2018none-invented-here syndrome\u2019 so common in product companies. Finally it is also about being able to make money and profit from reselling partner products, after bundling those products with one\u2019s own value creation.<\/p>\n<p>In the solution business, IBM is the king.\u00a0 In 2010, IBM made 44% of its revenues with software, 39% with services, 9% with financing and only 8% with hardware.\u00a0 Its gross margin was 46%.\u00a0 And its EBT margin 20%.\u00a0 Which is great.<\/p>\n<p>Compare that with NSN.\u00a0 According to Nokia annual reports for the years 2007 to 2010, NSN has an average gross margin of 27%.\u00a0 With R&amp;D costs of 17%-20% of revenues, there is no way NSN can be profitable, when costs of sales are at least 10% and G&amp;A about 5%.\u00a0 NSN has lost 1.3bn Euro in 2007, 300m Euro in 2008, 1.6bn Euro in 2009, 700m Euro in 2010.\u00a0 Cumulative four-year losses: 3.9bn Euros.<\/p>\n<p>What this tells us is that NSN lacks scale as a product company, its average market share across its very broad product portfolio has simply been too low in the last 4 years.\u00a0 No surprise then that the management has signalled that a new strategy is going to be implemented, focusing on the service business as well as key portfolio areas.<\/p>\n<p>We wish NSN success in its transformation to a company with much less hardware, more software, more service and more solutions. IBM has done it in the 1990s, and we know that NSN has great people that can pull it through as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, we have noticed something interesting.\u00a0\u00a0 Go to the web sites of the top telecom suppliers and check in which order the words \u201cproducts\u201d, \u201csolutions\u201d and \u201cservices\u201d appear there. We have done the check: Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN): products, solutions,&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-container\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/are-you-a-product-a-solution-or-a-service-company\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[90],"tags":[42,6,10],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are you a product, a solution or a service company? | Investaura<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/are-you-a-product-a-solution-or-a-service-company\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are you a product, a solution or a service company? | Investaura\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, we have noticed something interesting.\u00a0\u00a0 Go to the web sites of the top telecom suppliers and check in which order the words \u201cproducts\u201d, \u201csolutions\u201d and \u201cservices\u201d appear there. 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It has attracted more than 3,500 readers since publication at the end of April 2012, from Germany, Finland, Portugal, India as well as many other countries. 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(Part 2 of 2)","date":"November 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Translated from an original article written by Thomas Bez, TEDESCA Consulting, www.tedesca.com \u00a0 The TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Framework Unlike the ITU-T, the TMF is not a traditional standardisation organization but an independent industry consortium of telecom network operators, manufacturers and service providers. This is probably one of its greatest advantages,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Insights&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Business_Planning2.jpg?fit=1024%2C631&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1659,"url":"https:\/\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/2013\/07\/budgeting-planning-costing-the-first-easy-to-use-solution-in-a-post-excel-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":1147,"position":4},"title":"Budgeting, Business Planning and Service Costing in a box: the first easy-to-use solution a post-Excel world","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Do you still use Microsoft Excel for Budgeting, Business Planning or Performance Management? Microsoft Excel was good for the job 10-15 years ago, but Excel also has its limits, and you probably have come across many of them already. In particular, Excel is not a database! Today, very powerful, easy-to-use,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Investaura Solutions&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.invest-aura.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/130614_Architecture-1024x656.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6201,"url":"https:\/\/www.investaura.co\/wordpress\/2018\/04\/improving-financial-performance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1147,"position":5},"title":"Improving Financial Performance","date":"April 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Investaura, the expert advisors for the ICT markets, are pleased to present three software solutions to plan, analyse and improve financial performance: Adaptive Planning, STEM and Prodacapo. Mid-size and large companies have complex needs, and many practitioners are on the lookout for more powerful and professional tools. 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