After Sales Excellence is the operating model that transforms after-sales service from a reactive function to a strategic platform for growth. According to Bonfiglioli Consulting's Benchmarking Study “What's next in Operations?” - conducted on more than 100 cross-industry companies - only 48% of industrial companies have a structured After Sales, while more than 31% have not yet implemented it organically. The model is based on three key macro-processes: Request to Resolution (RTR), to manage support from inquiry to solution; Opportunity to Cash (OTC), to develop business opportunities on the installed base; and Inquiry to Learning (ITL), to transform field experience into organizational learning. Transformation has three phases-Discovery, Envisioning, Execution-and generates benefits on four levels: strategic, competitive, economic, and operational. Excellent After Sales not only improves internal efficiency: it strengthens corporate positioning, increases margins, and consolidates customer relationships over time.
For years, many industrial companies have viewed After Sales as an ancillary function:necessary, sure, but basically reactive. An area called upon to intervene when something doesn't work, to handle spare parts, service requests, tickets, emergencies. Today this vision is no longer sufficient. In a scenario characterized by competitive pressure, growing technical complexity, high customer expectations, and the need to generate more stable and recurring revenues,after-sales service has become one of the most decisive areas for business competitiveness.
The key point is simple: the market no longer buys just a product, but a promise of results. The customer values not only the quality of the machine, system or solution purchased, but the ability of the supplier to guarantee its uptime, business continuity, support, upgrade and maintenance over time. In other words,value progressively shifts from product to performance. And it is service management that makes this promise credible.
This change represents a cultural shift before an organizational one. In many industries, the product tends to “commoditize”: basic performance is becoming similar, competitors are converging on similar technology standards, and the difference is no longer played out solely on technical features. This is where industrial technical support becomes a distinguishing feature. Response time, availability of spare parts, quality of support, competence of people and digital tools become determining factors in customer choice and loyalty.
To this is added another decisive element: after-sales is often one of the highest margin areas. Service contracts, scheduled maintenance, spare parts, retrofits, upgrades and premium services can generate higher margins than the initial sale, helping to stabilize cash flow and make revenues more predictable. Quality service increases trust, protects customer share and creates positive lock-in that favors renewals, range expansions, and new business opportunities.
And the data bear this out: according to the Benchmarking Biennial study “What's next in Operations?”, which involved more than 100 cross-industry companies, only 48% of the sample have a structured and steadily improving After Sales function, while over 31% have not yet implemented it organically. A significant gap - but also a concrete opportunity for differentiation for those who decide to seriously invest in this area.
| Size | After Sales Reactive | After Sales Excellence |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Intervenes when a problem arises | Anticipates needs and prevents problems|
| Revenue | Spot and unpredictable | Recurring, planned and structural |
| Customer Relations | Transactional and discontinuous | Consultative and continuous |
| Data | Uncollected or untapped | Strategic Set for Decisions and Opportunities |
| KPIs | Absent or partial | Structured, shared and monitored |
| Installed base | Set of assets to support | Set of business opportunities |
| Marginality | Low and difficult to measure | High and measurable by contract or asset |
| Organization | Informal and responsive | Structured with defined governance and roles |
| Processes | Not standardized | End-to-end, traceable and improvable |
| Learning | Experiences not capitalized | Know-how turned into organizational intelligence |
To transform after sales into a valuable platform, it is not enough to introduce a few KPIs or digitize ticketing. You need a true operating model of excellence. In the framework proposed by Bonfiglioli Consulting's Knowledge Office, After Sales Excellence is developed as an integrated system on multiple levels.
At the top is the organization, which defines governance, roles, responsibilities and coordination mechanisms. Below operate three major areas - Sales Operations, Service Operations, and Marketing Operations - called upon to work consistently to align business development, service delivery, and customer relations. Downstream are the key activities: product, business opportunity, account and service management. Finally, there are the enablers: digitizing processes, asset management, connecting with the installed base, and data availability and quality.
It is precisely these elements that enable the shift from a reactive logic to a predictive, proactive and value-oriented model throughout the customer lifecycle. In this perspective, service management is no longer just an operational function, but an ecosystem that integrates execution, knowledge, marginality, and customer experience.
A model of After Sales Excellence rests on three closely interconnected macro-processes.
The first is the Request to Resolution (RTR), the process that governs the management of care from initial request to final resolution. Proper information gathering, standardized classification of need, intervention planning, technical quality of response, and end-to-end traceability. Without a robust RTR, the risk is chasing urgency, multiplying inefficiencies, and compromising customer perception.
The second is the Opportunity to Cash (OTC), the true economic engine of post-sales. It is the process of reading the installed base not just as a set of machines to be supported, but as a wealth of opportunities to be developed. Spare parts, maintenance, contracts, premium services, upgrades and retrofits become the object of a structured commercial oversight, capable of transforming service management into a concrete lever of growth and marginality.
The third is Inquiry to Learning (ITL), which closes the loop by transforming field experience into organizational learning. Tickets, feedback, intervention data, and recurring anomalies become valuable material for improving product, processes, and internal know-how. This is where after-sales service stops being just "response" and becomes industrial intelligence.
The real breakthrough occurs when RTR, OTC and ITL are not managed separately, but in an integrated way, end-to-end. Only then can service management evolve from a reactive function to a structured platform for competitiveness and revenue generation.
After Sales transformation does not happen by isolated interventions. It requires a structured,progressive and coherent path articulated in three phases.
1. Discovery - The rigorous understanding of the current state: analysis of the competitive environment, assessment of end-to-end processes, observation of critical sub-processes (from inquiries to bids, from spare parts to contracts, to field management), reading of the organizational set-up, available tools, skills and corporate culture. For companies with an international presence, it is critical to examine the geographic footprint as a multilevel delivery network, assessing its responsiveness, flexibility, cost-to-serve, and scalability.
2. Envisioning - The design of the future model: target organization, governance, KPIs, roadmap and quick wins. The goal is not to envision an abstract ideal system, but to design a TO-BE model that is sustainable and consistent with the business. There are four key levers to work on: organization, processes, tools, people and culture. No transformation is truly effective if any one of these dimensions lags behind.
3. Execution and Change Management - The often most delicate phase: program management, cross-functional involvement, targeted training, continuous KPI monitoring, and a strong focus on cultural change. Because a new process, without new behaviors and widespread accountability, risks remaining only on paper.
When after sales is rethought in an integrated way, the benefits are spread over four complementary levels:
An evolved model of After Sales Excellence not only improves internal efficiency:strengthens corporate positioning, qualifies offerings, and consolidates customer relationships.
The experiences collected in the Bonfiglioli Consulting white paper show how this transformation generates concrete impacts in very different contexts.
Case 1 - Italian industrial group with international network: has rethought its geographic footprint, consolidated fragmented after-sales service structures, and built clear processes between headquarters and subsidiaries, making the model more effective, efficient, and scalable, also in view of new acquisitions.
Case 2 - Italian chemical group with headquarters in Europe: worked to seize new opportunities for growth of the Global Service Department. The project led to the definition of Service Level Agreements, parameterization of the spare parts warehouse, construction of shared KPIs, and requirements for an integrated CRM with Sales Automation, Ticketing and Field Management, as well as a skills development plan and the start of a structured asset management process.
Case 3 - Italian B2C company with over 50 years of history: optimized technical support activities, reduced response times and introduced KPIs to govern the area, focusing on workload mapping, reviewing tools and technical documentation, and launching specific initiatives to increase the efficiency of technical support.
For many industrial companies, after-sales is still perceived as the "moment after" the sale. In reality, it is where the value of the enterprise is consolidated every day: this is where reliability, the quality of the customer relationship, the ability to generate recurring revenues, and the strength of the competitive positioning are measured.
After Sales Excellence is thus much more than a support function: it is a strategic industrial platform, the lever that enables the move from a reactive model to a predictive, consultative, data-driven, and sustainable growth-oriented system. Organizations that know how to structure it with method, governance, and widespread accountability will build a stronger relationship with the market and more lasting competitiveness.
Because today it is not only those who sell a good product who win. He wins who can guarantee, over time, the value of that choice.
After Sales Excellence is a structured operating model that transforms after-sales service from a reactive function to a strategic platform for growth. It is based on the integration of processes (RTR, OTC, ITL), organization, digital tools, and skills, with the goal of generating recurring margins, customer loyalty, and lasting competitive advantage.
According to Bonfiglioli Consulting's Benchmarking Study "What's next in Operations?" - conducted on more than 100 cross-industry companies - only 48% of industrial companies have a structured After Sales function that is constantly improving. More than 31% have not yet implemented it organically.
The three key macro-processes are: the Request to Resolution (RTR), which governs service management from request to resolution; the Opportunity to Cash (OTC), which turns the installed base into business opportunities; and the Inquiry to Learning (ITL), which converts field experience into organizational learning. The real breakthrough occurs when the three processes are managed in an integrated way.
Service contracts, scheduled maintenance, spare parts, retrofits and premium services can generate higher margins than the initial sale. Structured After Sales stabilizes cash flow, makes revenues more predictable, and creates positive lock-in that encourages renewals and new business opportunities.
Transformation is divided into three phases: Discovery (analysis of the current state of processes, organization and tools), Envisioning (designing the future model with KPIs, governance and roadmap) and Execution (implementation with program management, training and change management).
The main KPIs of After Sales Excellence include: average response and resolution time (MTTR), first time fix rate, service contract renewal rate, marginality per contract or asset, Net Promoter Score (NPS) of service, and cost to serve per customer.
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