Creating Effective Customer Solutions – a Global Perspective

Abstract

Globalization is changing the rules of how to achieve long-term success by companies in their pursuit to meet growing customer requirements spanning various industries from manufacturing and retail to public sector. Traditional focus on simple stand-alone products or services aiming for low cost or product performance is over-ruled by the increasing demand for designing and offering customer solutions. They are defined in the extant literature as a combination of goods and services designed to satisfy the business needs of a customer. To consider the shift towards developing, selling and implementing effective customer solutions, the firms must transform many aspects of their business. The challenges they are facing are discussed in this paper by conducting an empirical research study within the Romanian IT industry and concluding that the contextual dimension must be considered in order to capture the complexity of integrated solutions agenda for both scholars and practitioners.

Keywords

• customer solutions
• value co-creation