Sustainable Competitive Advantages in the Industrial Service Business

The industrial service business in Finland has developed swiftly during the last two decades, mainly because of outsourcing, market openings and European Union (EU) regulations. Throughout this time, transformations in the energy, telecom and forestry industries have created a new industrial services sector. This article analysis the changes and structuring of Finnish industrial service companies, their customers and business networks. In the research methodology, the following methods were used to find out the changes and transformations in the industrial service sector: financial analysis desk studies, direct questionnaires and interviews with customers and service companies. Based on research results, a new competitive advantage framework was developed. The framework contains four main conceptual processes: (1) Critical Competence Resource Planning Model, (2) Profitable Growth Model, (3) Market Analysis and Customer Proximity Model and (4) Service Business Development Model. In this paper, we report in detail regarding our conceptualised Critical Resource Plan.