Definitions of terms 

Advanced services

In general, the perception of advanced services is any offerings or propositions that go beyond reactive support and repair services and planned maintenance services. By adding remote monitoring, remote diagnostics and predictive analytics to offer proactive and predictive support and maintenance. And by taking over more risks and responsibilities of customers like uptime, equipment performance or process outcome.

Application support

Support for operators or users of the equipment or software to better use and operate the equipment and software and that way improve the results, reliability and/or efficiency.

Condition-based maintenance

A maintenance strategy that monitors the actual condition of an asset to decide what maintenance needs to be done. CBM dictates that maintenance should only be performed when certain indicators show signs of decreasing performance or upcoming failure.

Direct cost

Direct cost - also cost of sales, cost of revenue, or cost of services - are referred to all the direct costs associated with services rendered to the customer for the business provides companies. It includes all the direct costs involved in running or performing services. The typical expenses included in the category of direct costs are the cost of material, cost of labour or cost of salaries of spending time directly and specifically to serve a customer, and all other costs which can be linked directly to the rendering of services.

On-demand services

As used in this benchmark, services that are bought by customers on a need-to basis for every instance, opposed to services that are bought via an ongoing contract or subscription. For example, on-demand maintenance services are negotiated for every time a customer needs maintenance to be performed on their equipment.

Operating income

Operating income is an accounting figure that measures the amount of profit realized from a business's operations, after deducting operating expenses such as wages, depreciation, and cost of goods sold (COGS). Operating income—also called income from operations—takes a company's gross income, which is equivalent to total revenue minus COGS, and subtracts all operating expenses. A business's operating expenses are costs incurred from normal operating activities and include items such as office supplies and utilities.

Predictive maintenance

A maintenance strategy that uses data analysis tools and techniques to detect anomalies in your operation and possible defects in equipment and processes so you can fix them before they result in failure.

Prescriptive maintenance

A maintenance strategy that collects and analyses data about an equipment's condition and possible defects in equipment and processes to come up with specialized recommendations and corresponding outcomes to reduce operational risks.

Product life cycle services

Any service that supports customers with their asset lifecycle management. Asset lifecycle management is the process of optimizing the profit generated by your assets throughout their lifecycle, from planning, acquisition, operation and maintenance, and disposal. For most manufacturers, this typically involves installation, commissioning, spare parts, maintenance, repair, upgrade, modernisation and disposal.

Recurring revenue

Company's revenue that is expected to continue in the future, as it comes from subscriptions or contracts that continue to renew till termination. Unlike one-off (repeat) sales, these revenues are predictable, stable and can be counted on to occur at regular intervals going forward with a relatively high degree of certainty. This differs from repeat revenue, which is still one-off sales that may or may not repeat, but does require repeating decisions of customers, repeating negotiations and new contracts.

Remote resolution

Support requests of customers that could be solved without dispatching a field service engineer on site. The issue is being diagnosed and solved by collaborating with customers' staff and/or via remote access and control connection.

Repeat cases

Any service request or service cases that are the result of a previous request or case that appears not to be solved before. So, these are the cases that did not have a first-time fix.