With PaaS, companies are addressing an ever-growing customer need
Sustainable business models with the Product as a Service (PaaS) approach offer many interesting advantages. With this variant of a so-called Circular Business Model (a business model for the Circular Economy), the product is no longer sold to the customer on a one-off basis, but is made available for use for a monthly rental fee, for example.
With PaaS, companies are addressing an ever-growing customer need. This is because more and more customers no longer want to own the product, but simply want to use it. With PaaS, the company remains the owner of the product and takes it back when the customer stops using it. This also has a positive effect on the use of resources. The resources no longer end up in landfills, but, after being taken back and subsequently processed, are returned, for example, as raw materials in the production of new products, which in turn can be made available to customers for use. In this way, a resource cycle is closed.
Closing resource cycles makes sense both ecologically and economically. Above all, because natural resources are becoming increasingly scarce and raw material prices become more expensive and more volatile. There are even more advantages that PaaS can offer to companies: PaaS is much more likely to build long-term customer relationships than other models. Since customers no longer buy the product just once, but use it for a long term while the company remains the owner of the product, there are many more opportunities to interact with customers and offer them more attractive services related to product usage – and to increase revenues. More contact points also help companies to understand their customers even better and help them respond to their customer’s individual wishes and needs.
Companies should take advantage of these opportunities to achieve greater resource efficiency and effectiveness and to win loyal and faithful customers who will generate revenue over a long period of time. This is more valuable than customers who only make a purchase once in a while.