In the industrial Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) landscape, aftermarket opportunities present a lucrative revenue stream. Yet, many OEMs struggle to fully tap into this potential for various reasons: data quality, fragmented and siloed data systems, change management, and cumbersome workflows. With today’s modern technology, automating aftermarket sales is within grasp for industrial OEMs, enabling them to streamline operations and unlock significant revenue growth with less effort. Here’s a closer look at how automation can transform aftermarket sales and drive value for OEMs enabling more efficient workflows.
Why Automating Aftermarket Sales is essential?
1. Enhancing Sales and Service Visibility into their Customers
In the aftermarket space, one of the key challenges is delivering a customer experience that is straightforward for the OEM. Automation addresses this challenge by integrating various data sets, including spreadsheets, into an Installed Base Intelligence platform with cleansed and unified data. This platform simplifies the management of an asset’s lifecycle and enhances visibility for both sales and service teams.
For sales, this helps by providing a clear view of equipment history and status at an account or at a site level. This visibility allows them to navigate complex product catalogs more effectively and determine the right time and offerings for customers. By understanding customer needs and equipment history, sales teams can proactively prevent downtime and tailor their solutions to enhance customer satisfaction and drive increased sales.
Service teams can gain insights into equipment health and historical data, enabling accurate diagnostics and informed recommendations. Automation allows service teams to monitor equipment proactively, reaching out to customers before issues become critical. This not only reduces downtime but also creates additional revenue opportunities through timely maintenance and service offerings. They also can leverage mobile information as well as customers on a location and equipment basis.
By leveraging automation to streamline workflows, both sales and service personnel benefit from increased operational efficiency. This leads to faster response times, reduced errors, and a more personalized customer experience, ultimately improving sales performance and customer retention.
2. Enabling Proactive Maintenance and Service Offerings
Not only should OEMs be able to leverage “what’s happened” at a customer’s site, but they also need to be able to support their customers proactively. Today, many OEMs take a reactive approach to service, responding to customer requests for break-fix issues. This results in missed opportunities to sell services and support packages that could extend equipment life and enhance customer satisfaction.
Automation enables OEMs to shift from a reactive to a proactive service model. By leveraging AI and data models specifically built for each OEM, they can predict and prescribe when maintenance or parts replacement is needed. Automated systems can generate alerts for both OEM teams, prompting timely maintenance actions that prevent costly breakdowns and downtime.
This Automation-led proactive approach allows OEMs to offer predictive maintenance services bundled with aftermarket parts and support, driving recurring revenue and strengthening customer relationships.
3. Personalizing Marketing and Sales Strategies
Automation can also revolutionize how OEMs identify, market, and sell their aftermarket offerings. Traditional one-size-fits-all marketing approaches often fall short in addressing the unique needs and preferences of different customer segments; they are not refined and are overly generic. Automated systems can leverage customer data to deliver targeted and personalized marketing campaigns with proper segmentation.
For instance, utilizing an Installed Base Intelligence Platform an OEM can understand customer purchasing behaviors, maintenance history, industry specifics, product lines, location usage, and more. Using this data, OEMs can tailor their marketing efforts to recommend relevant parts and services on a per-customer basis. Automated email campaigns and personalized promotions can prompt customers to purchase parts or schedule maintenance services at optimal times with the correct offering.
This data-driven approach not only enhances customer engagement but also drives higher conversion rates. By delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time, OEMs can maximize aftermarket sales and tap into new revenue opportunities.
Change Is Relevant
Automating aftermarket sales presents a significant opportunity for industrial OEMs to unlock new revenue streams and drive business growth. By providing clean and unified data, streamlining the customer experience, enabling proactive maintenance, personalizing marketing strategies, and enhancing efficiency, OEMs can capture more value from their aftermarket operations and strengthen their competitive position. As customer expectations evolve toward greater convenience and personalization, embracing automation in aftermarket sales is not just a strategic advantage—it’s a necessity for sustained success in the industrial OEM market.
