Services customised for the needs of businesses at different stages of their life cycle, developing cross-organisational service paths and improving their service experience are critical development focuses of both the capacity for renewal and sustainable growth. Improving business experience is a complex phenomenon which must permeate all areas of activity horizontally. In order to improve business experience, it is vital to meet the customer as a company and as a person, listen to the customer and provide a service that adds value to the customer’s business development.
To improve business experience in everyday service situations, the company needs to feel that it has been consulted, which is evident in, for example, the fact that it always receives a response. This success factor is broadly related to the region’s business-friendliness and impact assessment, but also to the provision of an individual business service and the overall attitude toward entrepreneurship. Enabling consultation is a key element in the development and continuous improvement of services and requires effective channels for using the services and giving feedback. It is important to identify the factors and the places where business experience is created and where the right measures can be taken to create a positive experience.
To support business startups and growth, there must be an ability to build and produce a service path customised for the company’s business needs, serving the company’s different life cycle stages and situations. Business development services cover a wide range of local, regional and national services, and increasingly also directly international services. Close collaboration, exchange of information and even shared customer management among different business service providers will enhance the experience of the business customer and ensure that the company receives the service that meets its service needs in a timely manner.
The increasingly diverse use of digital solutions, artificial intelligence in particular, helps customise overall solutions and service paths that fit needs better. The role of the public actor is to play an active role as a service provider in situations where market failure can be seen and where the profitable and growth-oriented business development of companies requires a new type of service production that responds quickly to changes in the world. Business services should cover different life cycle situations, and particular emphasis should be placed on the creation of new businesses and startups on the one hand, and on enabling business growth on the other.
Digitality and utilisation of AI are also related to vitality data and the use of data analytics in knowledge management and forecasting. An up-to-date knowledge base, the analytics based on it and knowledge management practices aimed at utilising information are ways to ensure that the activities are based on the broadest possible understanding of current change phenomena. Working in networks and ecosystems both requires and generates a shared knowledge base. Data and information are also raw materials for the development of new services, the discovery of potential customers and enhancing the efficiency of operations.
The field of business development and its phenomena have become more complex with the rest of society. Vitality, competitiveness and the capacity for renewal and innovation as well as the new laws of ecosystems require a multi-dimensional understanding of what is happening around us. The value of the information has been recognised as high, although it is difficult to define its monetary value, and the effects that increase productivity are often indirect.
The thirst for reliable information is emphasised while the resources for seeking information are scarce and the time spent searching for information is in competition with other tasks. Instead of individual data orders and data searches, it is more efficient to produce key data content centrally and to share information in accordance with modern tools and open data principles to promote joint development work. Digitality and interfaces are perhaps already well-established in our language, but in practice they still require active promotion. Materials are being opened, but a significant part of the data is still paid, hidden or too low-quality to be used as it is. The tools used in analytics are developing with huge leaps. A pioneering role also involves accepting moderate risk in order to find the best solutions.
In order to provide businesses with an increasingly targeted and personalised service experience, continuous service development, rapid response and up-to-date information are needed. To do this, we need a wide range of measures – both agile and long-term.
Ideas put forward regarding the targeting of measures
In order to support a diversified business structure, there must also be business services for the ‘undergrowth’ and the ‘inbetweeners’. Are there also services for companies that fall between startups and established growth companies?
Understanding customers as a whole – for example, the multi-problematic clients in the social and health care sector, not solving partial problems in business services, either, but rather knowing the root causes by understanding the whole
More genuinely seamless service chains instead of sending customers running from one authority to another
Development of smart service paths