What is an Installed Base?

An Installed Base is the total number of units of a certain product or piece of machinery that have been sold and are in use by customers. It includes the number of units that have been installed and are being used in the field.

The Installed Base is a crucial measure for OEMs because it enables them to plan for future support and maintenance needs as well as determine the size of their customer base and the possibility for future sales and income streams. Manufacturers may detect patterns and trends in consumer usage and behavior by watching the Installed Base over time. These patterns and trends can then be used to guide product development and marketing initiatives.

What is an Industrial Installed Base?

An Installed Base is a term used by Industrials to represent their customer base. When an OEM installs a machine/equipment at its customer’s location, it becomes a part of the OEM’s Installed Base.

The Installed Base contains information that can answer the questions like- who owns that product, what product/products did they purchase from us, how many of them do they have, where is it located, and for how long is it being used. Moreover, it also consists of the in and out details of the products from the model, serial number, variant type, purchase date, the life of the product, and many more.

What is an Installed Base Platform?

An Installed Base Platform is a system of intelligence that aggregates, unifies, organizes, and analyzes just the data OEMs need to deliver the best experience to customers. It is a powerful tool, purpose-built for Industrial OEMs – a tool that connects all the systems that you use today from the powerhouse ERP to the lightning-fast CRMs. It brings together all your account, location, contact, equipment, service, parts, and warranty. It helps you zoom in from your territory to a single line item installed at a customer location. The IBP is designed to remove any element of unreliability in your data without you having to do any of the heavy lifting.

Installed Base Platform makes customer-facing workflows more efficient. The cloud-based platform includes purpose-built AI that provides a complete 360 view of the Installed Base, intelligent hunting lists, and the ability to orchestrate automation between various tools, systems, or processes. This enables smarter, faster workflows leading to increases in productivity, capacity, and scalability.

The history of an Installed Base Platform

Entytle was born out of frustration with the state-of-the-art (read nonexistent) Aftermarket CRM systems. We couldn’t believe that in the 21st century, Aftermarket business leaders “got by” with spreadsheets, ad-hoc reports, or worse, no analytical insights into the behavior of their customers and assets. The cost of this approach is staggering – we estimate that it is the equivalent of a 5-10% productivity hit to the field teams in fruitless outreach, missing installed base info, wrong parts, low first-time resolution rates, etc.

After interviewing 300+ Aftermarket leaders in companies across the US and Europe, we realized that there is a better way to make, and save money from your Installed Base. What if you were able to pinpoint exactly those customers who need attention and serve them completely and well? Instead of scattering your attention and resources across the entire Installed Base thereby satisfying no one? What if you could have all the relevant information about these customers in a full 360 view of their interactions with you? Instead of running reports from multiple systems and cobbling them together? What if you could pre-empt service incidents for these customers to yield better outcomes? Instead of reacting to their “firefights” with attendant costs? What if this could help you connect with the “invisible 60%” to grow your wallet share? Instead of only focusing on the top 20%?

We are taught this is not only important and valuable but also possible, and that’s how the journey of an Installed Base Platform began.

Why Do Industrials need an Installed Base Platform?

An Installed Base Platform is an industrial OEM’s biggest hope in quickly adapting to the rapidly evolving market landscape.

Installed Base Platform assembles and processes massive amounts of customer data using sophisticated, purpose-written algorithms to deliver highly qualified opportunities and actionable customer insights that your Sales and Services professionals can use right away. This, in turn, enables your teams to quickly build a pipeline no matter what market conditions look like. 

An Installed Base Platform does the heavy lifting for you, so you or your team don’t have to. It connects multiple siloed systems typical in a  manufacturing setup (think, ERP, CRM, Service tools, etc). It understands manufacturing concepts and can combine data from multiple systems meaningfully. To do this, it will fix errors, eliminate duplicates & build relationships between equipment, parts,  locations, accounts, contacts, services, warranties, line items, and much more. Once data accuracy and reliability are established,  manufacturing-specific opportunity-generation algorithms take over to create quick and long-term wins for your team. With an  IBP, your organization would go from raw, difficult data to actionable insights in a snap.

Additional resources for you

1. Industrial OEMs need an Installed Base Platform now more than ever…
2. The value of your installed base is the value of your business
3. How can Industrials use Installed Base data to boost revenue growth?
4. Are BI tools a match for Installed Base Platform?
5. Why Installed Base prospecting is broken for OEMs
6. Industrials- Are you holding back your channel partners from better serving your Installed Base?
7. What Does Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs have to do with Industrial OEMs, Digitization of Customer Experience & Installed Base?