Last week, we introduced our 2021 Business Trends report based on in-depth conversations with top CSOs in our Outthinker Strategy Network. We will be expanding on one of these trends every week with the intention of supporting your organization’s strategy for the next year and beyond. Newsletter subscribers will receive early access to each weekly announcement. If you’re not already a subscriber and would like to be, click here.

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Picture this: you’ve been stuck at home for a large part of the past nine months. You’ve completed your Zoom meetings for the day and rinsed off after a quick ride on your Peloton bike. The ingredients for dinner are in the fridge, dropped off earlier by HelloFresh.

You feel healthy and safe, thanks to an online chat with your doctor where she sent a refill for your prescription medication. Before bed, you watch an episode of your favorite show on Netflix and wind down by listening to a guided meditation on the Headspace app.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Thanks to cloud computing, the “as a service” business model was popularized years ago with the ability to rent computing power, storage, and infrastructure on a usage basis. Over the past year, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken that model to new levels and driven behavior patterns that have multiplied the adoption of anything as a service (XaaS).

Virtual delivery models offer everything online 

Beyond a pricing model, TeleXaaS encompasses services that were traditionally delivered in-person and have quickly moved online. Today, you can learn something new, change your habits, or talk with your therapist in an exclusively virtual delivery model. Even airlines have pivoted to send their products through a customer subscription without their setting foot on a plane.

XaaS was already a major player pre-Covid, with a market value of $93.8 billion in 2018 projected to reach $344.3 billion by 2024, but unexpected, pandemic-driven behavior adaptations have added even more market potential and new virtual layers. With the rise of the cloud, the IT sector showed us how anything can be delivered as a service via the internet, and in 2020, Covid has forced us to see how easy it is to get household items, education, and entertainment delivered safely to our homes.

For organizations, TeleXaaS enables scalability, improves accessibility, and reduces implementation times. For consumers, it often reduces total cost of ownership, increases convenience, and enhances the overall experience of using a service.

How can you move to TeleXaas?

If your company has been reluctant to move to an as-a-service delivery model, it may be time to reconsider. Would your own offerings and customer base benefit from faster implementation times and an OPEX purchasing model? Additionally, does your organization offer face-to-face experiences and services that might now be delivered virtually?

Consider the following:

  • If the physical “product” you currently offer is simply a vehicle by which to deliver certain types of value or outcomes, what are the top five benefits you deliver to your customers? Example: For some car owners, their car is a physical package that gives them the benefit of transporting themselves to stores, schools, work, and other places they need to be. For others, the car is a vehicle for creating prestige or communicating something about their character.
  • Which of these top five benefits could you potentially deliver virtually? Example: could you get people to stores virtually (like Instacart), schools virtually (through online classes), or deliver prestige virtually (with social-media images and badges)?
  • What would you charge for, and how might you deliver, the services you could offer remotely?

Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels