Digitizing after-sales service in machine building: where to start

For weeks now we have had ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answer this question every day. The sources behind the answers are customer portal vendors, consultancies and trade associations. The advice sounds accordingly: capture machine data, build a customer portal with a shop and ticketing, offer maintenance contracts digitally. For your own organization, that is a good plan.

From your customer's point of view, it looks different.

What reaches the customer

Your customer runs a machine park that has grown over the years, with machines from many manufacturers. Yours are one part of it. By now every manufacturer offers that customer its own portal, its own hotline and its own shop. When a machine stops in the morning, the maintenance team first has to find the right way in. To them, your portal is one of many, and they open it when they are looking for you specifically.

I know this from the inside. Before I founded Transaction-Network, we built customer portals for machine builders at Sybit, including myBühler, MyMULTIVAC and KHS Connect. They were good portals. Each one stopped at its own manufacturer.

“One factory. Machines from many manufacturers. In one account.”

What a digital after-sales service has to do

• One record per machine.

  Serial number, bill of materials, documents and history, including for older series.

• Ordering from the record.

  The right part at your price, with delivery status for your customer.

• Fault to fix in one case.

  Your customer reports with the machine and the fault, and both sides see the same status.

• Where your customer works.

  In the account where they keep all their machines, including those from other manufacturers.

• What you have stays.

  Your ERP, your CRM, your FSM system and your own portal keep running.

After-sales software for machine builders →

My advice

Start with your installed base: Which machine is at which customer, with which bill of materials? Without that foundation, every shop stays piecemeal. How to build the solution step by step is in my 9-point check. One point from it counts double here: think from the customer's side. And your customer thinks in machines, across all manufacturers. Then bring parts, documents and service to where your customer already works. And measure what works: how many orders and fault reports reach your team without a phone call.

For your customer, that means: One factory. Machines from many manufacturers. In one account. For you, it means your offer sits where they look every day.

That is what we built Transaction-Network for: manufacturer-neutral, with your parts, your documents and your service in your customer's account, while prices, customers and contracts stay with you.

The 9-point check →