10 practices for service productization

Does productization of a service make sense? Wiktionary defines productization as "the act of modifying something, such as a concept or a tool internal to an organization, to make it suitable as a commercial product." This definition does not imply that the result of the development is an inflexible product but rather something that is commercially viable.

A good way to think of service productization is systematization. Defining something as a system makes it repeatable. What you can repeat, you can measure and develop further.


How to productize? Here are ten practices with examples:

1. Create a unique identity: Give your service a unique name that the customer can remember and talk about
2. Make it easy to understand: Create a description, white paper, website, or brochure of the service
3. Support your main brand: Make the service compatible with your company brand, extend a product brand with a service
4. Make it easy to sell: Make the service easy to sell and buy by defining a service blueprint, a price list, and respective resources
5. Make it repeatable: Create a service manual, standardize procedures and tools
6. Develop with customers: Define how you constantly learn from the customers and develop the service with the customers
7. Focus on profitability: Outsource suitable parts of the service, automate, offer self-service extensions, use the net
8. Measure: Set measurable goals, measure, and manage
9. Educate: Educate employees and partners, create training material, collect and distribute knowledge
10. Keep it flexible: create a service platform with modules that can be combined to meet individual needs