Module 4 – Resource integration in the heavy commercial vehicle industry

 
Resource integration in the heavy commercial vehicle industry

Resource integration is the central concept in the service logic – the customers creates value through integrating resources. As suppliers of heavy commercial vehicles, services and transport solutions, I would say that we, together with our customers, use and are also depending on resource integration.

According to the service logic, a resource is something that actors can draw on for support and these resources can be either operant or operand (Maria Åkesson, video, “Resource integration”). We as vehicle manufacturer deliver our vehicles to the customers. Examples of operant resources are our company´s employees (engineers, sales force etc.) and the customers employees (for example traffic planners, drivers, mechanics, etc.) Examples of operand resources are the vehicles, different sales support/IT systems, our factory, etc.

Maria Åkesson also says in her video: “Resources are not – they become”. We as suppliers are the experts of developing and building heavy commercial vehicles but our vehicles are of no use without someone knowing how to operate them. Our customers are the experts of operating the vehicles – they integrate their resources by knowing how to operate the vehicles in their specific operation/traffic.

As already mentioned in an earlier blog post, the industry for commercial vehicles has changed. Customers that traditionally have bought only a vehicle are now demanding more and more services packages and more and more complex service solutions connected to their actual vehicle purchase. This leads to new challenges and new ways of working. “Value co-creation” is getting more and more important. Our company enter into partnerships with the customers and work together to find the best solution that enables the customer to achieve profitability. Doing so also creates profitable business for us as a company, it´s a win-win situation.