Context

Even when an advanced service is highly desirable and feasible—effectively solving a real customer problem—it does not automatically lead to widespread adoption. The challenge is not just having the right service but also navigating the go-to-market journey, building trust, and driving adoption from early adopters to the early majority, ultimately achieving service product-market fit.

As manufacturing companies expand into data-driven and outcome-based services, they often experience an initial wave of early adopters who see the vision and are willing to experiment. However, scaling beyond this group requires a different approach.

The early majority, who are more pragmatic and risk-averse, demand stronger proof points, a structured onboarding experience, and a clear business case before committing.

Too often, service providers struggle to cross this adoption chasm—resulting in slow sales cycles, stalled implementations, and underwhelming growth. This is not a failure of the service itself but a gap in how it is positioned, sold, and integrated into customers' operations.

The Adoption Challenge: Why Scaling Advanced Services is Difficult

Even when an advanced service is well-developed and solves a critical customer problem, widespread adoption does not happen automatically. Many service organizations encounter long sales cycles, slow decision-making, and stalled implementations when trying to expand beyond early adopters.

A key challenge is ensuring the right fit between the solution and the customer’s readiness. Adoption depends not only on the value of the service itself but also on whether the customer is at the right maturity level to integrate and benefit from it. Some organizations may lack the internal capabilities, focus, or leadership commitment to fully embrace a new service model—leading to hesitation or partial implementations that never scale.

At the same time, B2B manufacturers and their service organisations often struggle to take customer centricity to the required level. Many still rely on traditional sales, marketing, and customer success approaches that were designed for product-centric businesses, rather than service-driven, long-term value creation. This lack of deep customer insights and adoption-focused capabilities makes it challenging to overcome common barriers, such as:

• Misalignment with customer priorities. 
  Even when a service offers clear benefits, customers may be focused on other initiatives and see it as "important but not urgent."
• Lack of clear ROI and risk mitigation. 
  The early majority requires more than technical proof. To feel confident about making a change, they need strong business cases, peer validation, and structured onboarding.
• Internal complexity and resistance. 
  Many customers struggle with rigid procurement processes, operational silos, or internal scepticism about new service models, slowing down adoption.
• A missing roadmap for adoption.
  Without a structured approach to guiding customers from initial onboarding to full-scale integration, services often remain underutilised and fail to deliver their full potential.

To accelerate adoption and scale successfully, manufacturers must align their go-to-market strategy with customer readiness, strengthen trust, and embed customer success into the entire lifecycle. The following sections explore the key levers for making this shift.

The stakes are high

The stakes of driving customer adoption of new are high, as manufacturers must adapt to changing market conditions.

Risks

If companies fail to accelerate adoption:

• Growth stalls, and services remain stuck with early adopters rather than scaling profitably.
• Competitors who master the adoption journey gain market leadership.
• Valuable investments in service development fail to achieve their full return.

Opportunities

However, if adoption accelerates:

• Companies establish a strong market presence and competitive advantage.
• Customers unlock the full benefits of the service, driving long-term loyalty and expansion.
• A repeatable, scalable model emerges, setting the stage for sustainable service-driven growth.

The solution - The Path to Scaling Advanced Services

For manufacturers offering advanced services, achieving a strong problem-solution fit is only the first step. The real challenge is accelerating adoption, crossing the gap from early adopters to the early majority, and ultimately achieving service product-market fit. By refining their go-to-market approach, strengthening credibility, and investing in lifecycle customer success, companies can turn slow adoption into a scalable growth engine, ensuring long-term success for both themselves and their customers.

The Service Transformation Summit on Accelerating The Customer Adoption of Advanced Services is designed for service leaders, executives, and developers who are seeking to accelerate the pace of their service transformation.

If you are involved in a service business undergoing transformation, on a mission to drive the growth of new, advanced services by improving customer adoption, this summit is for you.

The typical roles of participants in this summit are:

• Global heads of services
• Regional heads of services
• Service marketing leaders
• (Digital) Service innovation managers
• Service portfolio/product managers

Focussed & Purpose-Driven

Our summits are designed to tackle a specific, high-impact topic within service transformation. This ensures that discussions remain relevant and productive, avoiding generic or surface-level conversations.

• Each summit has a clear and specific theme, aligned with pressing industry challenges.
• Moderated sessions ensure discussions stay on point, addressing key obstacles and opportunities.
• Participants engage in targeted exchanges, rather than broad, unfocused networking.

Actionable & Practical

The goal is not just to exchange ideas but to translate them into real-life impact. Every participant leaves with tangible outcomes for their organization.

• Participants’ own challenges are embedded in fictive case studies, making discussions highly relevant.
• An online assessment before the summit helps map maturity levels and key challenges in advance.
• Findings from discussions are translated into practical takeaways applicable to real-world business scenarios.
• Each participant articulates short-term actions or strategic adjustments they can immediately implement.

Continuous Learning & Global Reach

The journey doesn’t end with a single event. Our structured approach ensures ongoing development and opportunities to reconnect.

• Five summits per year, each covering a different critical track:
  • Strategy & Business Models
  • Innovation & Service Development
  • Revenue Generation & Commercial Capabilities
  • Service Delivery & Operational Capabilities
  • Digital & Data Capabilities
• New focus areas are introduced each year to avoid stagnation and repetitive discussions.
• Summits take place in Amsterdam, Chicago, and Singapore, fostering global connections.
• Participants can deepen their engagement through peer groups, academy programs, workshops, and benchmarking studies.