Whether the technology company is in the product, project or product-project business, it has the choice of offering standard or customised products.
- The advantage of tailor-made products is that they are closer to the customer and can be more closely tailored to his or her needs than the competition. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of being more expensive
- The advantage of the standard is that it benefits from the effects of lowering costs through volume. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of not “sticking” as closely to customer demand
no business is fixed in the standard or in the customised. Some companies, even medium-sized ones, have succeeded in partially “disrupting” a customised business by introducing standard elements. For example, MATIERE (415 employees), even if it is more in the classic B2B project business, is a good example of this approach. Originating in the Cantal region, it has transformed part of the traditionally custom-made engineering structures market and has developed strongly internationally by introducing concrete prefabrication and its Unibridge® modular metal bridge.
- It has built more than 13,400 structures and 65% of its turnover is currently generated internationally. It is permanently established in Australia, Iraq, the Philippines, the Ivory Coast, Algeria, Cameroon, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In the practice of the high-tech B2B/B2G company, it is rare that the company does 100% standard as well as 100% tailor-made:
- because the customer buying 100% customised products no longer wants to pay the full development costs alone
- because the customer buying 100% standard will ask for the possibility of obtaining a product or a project more finely adapted to his needs
The best of both worlds
Technology companies will therefore strive to benefit from “the best of both worlds”, i.e. both the customer adaptation allowed by customisation and the cost savings and competitiveness allowed by the standard.
How then can we offer the customer tailor-made solutions while still benefiting from the standard? This objective can be achieved in different ways, either separately or simultaneously:
- by keeping the standard product but strongly customising the services associated with the product
- by developing ‘platforms’ (as the automotive industry does, which is an expert in combining standard and customised products)
- by pooling as many components or building blocks as possible upstream of the product and customising the product only as far downstream as possible
- by offering the customer a limited number of options (again, as in the automotive industry)
- by charging the customer a fair price for adaptations or specific customisations
The difficult exercise of “tailor-made standard” is particularly important in the case of projects incorporating products. In this case, it will be necessary to offer competitively priced “tailor-made projects” incorporating products that have not been developed specifically for the project.
This will be the subject of the delicate and sometimes conflicting dialogue between projects and products, with the former always militating for customisation in each project and the latter for standardisation between different projects.
