Trying before Buying: The Development of a Starter Offering for Needs-Based Cleaning Services

Abstract

The usage of IoT solutions is emerging fast in all sorts of areas. One of the businesses where this trend is uprising is the cleaning industry. Sensors are for example im plemented to track visitor traffic, supply consumption and predict cleaning needs. Global hygiene and health company Essity is delivering a B2B service for needs based-cleaning. This thesis is made on behalf of Essity, and aims to research and develop a concept for an introduction service to enable customers to test the service before implementing it for their whole business and support Essity in reaching new customers. The project was initiated by the making of a market and company analysis, estab lishing opportunities in the cleaning industry market. To gain better understanding of the key factors driving customer value, qualitative customer needs research was performed as a next step. Due to the service oriented nature of the offering, the con cepts were developed and evaluated in an iterative process where interviewees were involved in several steps. When the most promising concept had been identified, the service was developed more in detail to provide a better visualization of the concept. The results from the customer needs research showed a need of adaptability re garding both size and data collected. Another key insight was the need of providing support in both the implementation and evaluation of the offering. This resulted in a proposed Starter Offering promoted by sales calls, however the system is adapted to let customers order it by themselves. The sensors are ordered in predefined kits with possible addition of other types of sensors. This gives the customer ability to adapt the offering to their business needs. The research during the project answered the first research question What are the key factors determining customer value in an introduction service for needs based cleaning?. Using this information, the service concept was developed to drive cus tomer value during the whole customer journey. By this the second research question How can an introduction service be designed to support the customer during their whole journey, from discovery to potential scaling? was answered as well. Moving forward, further research needs to be done in order to develop the internal processes of Essity.