Exploring the impact from digitalization on business relationships in welding manufacturing

Other conference contribution, 2020

Digitalization has a vast impact on industry in terms of firm strategies and business models (Jocevski, et al., 2020). The aim of the paper is to explore digitalization’s impact on a firm’s business relationships and networks, including both existing supplier and customer relationships and development of new ones. The content of current relationships is explored in terms of shared activities, resources and actor interaction.  

The paper is based on a case study of BETA, an industrial firm and manufacturer of welding equipment and consumables. BETA is currently developing and implementing digital technologies in their products and services. This digitalization journey does not only impact their internal process but also their business relationships. It might in turn lead to new business relationships. BETA is currently offering digital solutions to its customers, the so-called BETA Digital Solutions. Their prototype of the digital cloud platform was launched in 2018. Shortly after that, the commercialization started. By using cloud platform and IoT, BETA promises to its customers maximization of their welding productivity, quality consistence, downtime reduction, and real time information about energy and wire consumption. BETA has been working to expand its digital solutions portfolio and platform functionalities.

Results of the paper regard learning points from the digitalization journey and describe the various practiced digitalized offerings and business models of BETA. The results build on the framework by Pagani & Pardo (2017) and preliminary include identification of key interfaces in business relationships in context of digitalization. As it is now and planning for next steps, on the customer side, BETA has been commercializing few digital solutions, while more advanced service offerings, with some with degrees of circularity, are still in the BETA’s roadmap and their business models are still under development. BETA’s plan is to implement a pilot/proof in a near future for these advanced service offerings and business models, in collaboration with customers. Regarding the supplier side, BETA sees the importance of supply chain management and works continuously with their current suppliers as well as develops contacts with new suppliers for digitalization solutions.