Productization of an IT service firm

Abstract

Two types of businesses dominate the landscape of the IT industry: service businesses that develop tailor-made software based on customer specific needs on the one hand, and software businesses that develop standard software products based on market needs on the other hand. The so-called productization process enables software companies to perform a business transformation from customer specific service-driven to a product business. This research aims to evaluate to what extent the proposed productization process is applicable in a service-oriented company using seven theory-testing case studies within the context of one IT service firm. The results indicate that the productization process cannot be applied to its full extent, since most of the product-driven processes are not mature, which is largely caused by a lack of knowledge about the productization process in service firms. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.