ITEA is the Eureka Cluster on software innovation
ITEA is the Eureka Cluster on software innovation
Published on 04 Nov 2019

Hyperscale and Microcare, the secret sauce of successful digital services

Are you responsible for bringing digital products to the market? Then the book “Hyperscale and Microcare - the Digital Business Cookbook”, will give you a head start. This book, published by ITEA project Flex4Apps partners Nick Boucart and Peter Verhasselt from Sirris, explains the methodology of Hyperscale and Microcare and what it takes to build winning digital products today.

Move towards offering digital services

Today many companies are offering digital services: banks offer mobile and web apps to manage accounts, SaaS companies sell subscriptions rather than a traditional software license to use their platform and online marketplaces connect sellers with buyers. Even traditional product builders, like machine builders, are equipping their machines with sensors and IoT to be able to expand their offering with services that are powered by digital technology.

Deeper customer relationships at a global scale

This move towards offering digital services creates great opportunities for companies: they can now develop deeper relationships with their customers (Microcare), at a global scale (Hyperscale). At first, this seems a paradox: traditionally, a company had to be either customer intimate, at the expense of scalability, or scalable using a best product approach, at the expense of losing touch with individual customers. Yet, by cleverly using monitoring and analytics data, companies can build and finetune their services nowadays in such a way that they can attract, serve and maintain large numbers of customers, offering each of them a personalised and tailored experience. Successful digital businesses have a strong focus on the customer, and offer an integrated experience, where marketing, sales, customer support and servicing flow seamlessly into each other.

Hyperscale & Microcare - Peter-Verhasselt and Nick-Boucart

Digital Business cookbook

The ITEA project Flex4apps researched how to deploy queries to collect data, and install a data-driven product management mindset in their companies, and this with use cases in SaaS, telecom and home automation. In the book “Hyperscale and Microcare - the Digital Business Cookbook”, published at Die Keure, with the support of VLAIO and Innoviris, project partners Nick Boucart and Peter Verhasselt from Sirris explain this methodology down to the smallest details.

Sounds complicated? You can start small: a good place to start is at ‘user onboarding’. User onboarding is the system of actively guiding users to see new value in your product. Ask yourself: what experience do I need to create to let this new user experience her first “wow-this service is actually making my life easier”-moment. Which 3-4-5 steps does that user need to take to get there? Make sure you can measure these steps in your logging and analytics and follow up on it. Use this data to drive automated and personalised messages: this data serves as input for product managers to tweak and finetune your application and customer success teams can use this data to predict which users need additional help and reach out proactively to get the new user entirely in.

Companies that see their digital services as machines that attract, onboard, serve and maintain their customers, cost effectively and at scale, are the companies that win. A closed digital feedback loop, powered by analytics, deep customer understanding and a lean technology stack are the key enablers to do so.

Intrigued?

You can get your copy at https://www.diekeure.be/nl-be/professional/9127/hyperscale-microcare.

More info?

Flex4apps project website

Related projects

ITEA 3 Call 2
Winner ITEA Award of Excellence Impact and Exploitation 2020
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Flex4Apps

Platform for Application and Infrastructure Flexibility in Cyber-Physical Systems