To make the service integration a success story despite the many challenges, L J Oberle argues that management understanding is necessary to address the key success factors in the individual strategic approaches. These approaches concern either the core business or an explore business unit and vary in their integration degree. Thus, knowing which strategy is pursued allows to determine the most relevant success factors, which is the first step towards successful servitization and post-merger integration. Only if these factors are identified and addressed correctly, M&A is a promising approach to servitization for industrial companies, as L J Oberle's findings from the analysis or 8 case studies and a total of 24 interviews prove.

The Author:

Laura Johanna Oberle currently does a doctorate on business process management in service operations and servitization at the Chair of Service Operations Management at the University of Mannheim in cooperation with a German consultancy specialized in post-merger integration projects.