How to make your service ecosystem work?

Why an ecosystem in the first place? 

What are the 7 qualities of supporting software?

Parties forming a service ecosystem, understand that by combining their strengths they can serve their common clientele better than without one.

A service ecosystem is centrally operated and targets are shared. All parties add value to it and receive value from it. 

What ecosystems look like?

A service ecosystem consists of many actors: service providers, customers, customers’ customers, and suppliers. Parties are co-operating. Actors maximize each other’s profitability.

The leader in a service ecosystem is a company that centrally manages it, outlines the targets and actions. The leader coordinates customer value recognition. The leader prioritizes the steps to build the ecosystem.  

The leader is usually the company responsible for the majority of customers. Or the party that can profit the most.

Several transactions are taking place simultaneously in an ecosystem. Transactions form chains. There must be an agreed way to manage transactions and collect information about them.

What are the common goals of a service ecosystem?

All parties in a service ecosystem need to be aligned with common goals, like:

• Better customer satisfaction
• Competitiveness
• Maximizing the profitability of the ecosystem
• Creating and allocating a financial value
• Trust and visibility

When the parties are aligned in their targets, the next step is to digitalize the running of the ecosystem.

Should legacy systems be integrated?

Some ecosystems try to solve the manageability issues by integrating the different systems, which the parties use. It may become very expensive and does not offer the needed transparency even when using modern integration methods.

I am not saying that all companies should move to the same ERP system either. That would not provide for sufficient ecosystem management nor a required customer delighting interface. That would be far too expensive, too.

High customer satisfaction is not easy to achieve by just integrating or combining legacy systems. Such ecosystem operation would not be transparent enough. It also would likely require manual work by the parties. Financial benefits and productivity would be poor. 

To centrally manage an ecosystem and to make it transparent and fluid, a modern platform is needed.

Should you custom-build your ecosystem platform?

Some startups create transformational service ecosystems from scratch. They usually also build a software platform for the ecosystem from scratch.

What is modern service ecosystems software like?

Now, there is also standard flexible software available. Modern system architecture for an ecosystem business supports intelligent automation throughout the ecosystem. For all transactions. For all parties.

Characteristics of Service Ecosystem software:

1. Built for ecosystem model and multi-company structure
2. Able to contain all business rules governing how the ecosystem works 
3. Ability to model all chains of delivery transactions – and all variations
4. Contract data between the parties is digitalized
5. Pricing rules, costs, and charges – all need to be in the system 
6. Automated processing of financial transactions between the parties throughout the process
7. Easiness to add new parties to the existing ecosystem.

A service ecosystem is transparent and automation brings cost-effectiveness. Customers receive the expected value.

The ecosystem then must keep an eye on the competition and prioritize steps and processes to build and develop the ecosystem.

Enter the world of smooth ecosystem automation

Take a look at how we helped Technopolis’ service ecosystem with automated customer onboarding, pricing and charging for coworking services:

Blog post about Technopolis' Service Ecosystem

At Good Sign we enable modern services and streamline our customers’ pricing, billing, and monetization processes. For service businesses and service ecosystems alike.

Feel free to contact us and let’s have a chat on how we can support your service ecosystem.