Software providers increasingly need to focus on the optimisation of their services, including the ability to react to customer preferences. Through its flexible framework and algorithms, the ITEA project Flex4Apps creates a full loop that allows companies to offer more complex services while advancing the digital transition. For this unique result the project partners have received the ITEA Award of Excellence during the Online ITEA PO Days 2020.

With sensors becoming rapidly cheaper, manufacturing companies are expecting their massive sensor deployment to support vital services, such as predictive maintenance, automated supply chain management, operations & usage monitoring. However, billions of connected IoT devices, generating monumental amounts of data do not necessary result in smart systems or products. They do have a direct impact on cost. The InsightProducts project supports companies to improve their product and service offering through a cost-effective approach to relevant and qualitative product data acquisition and use in view of digital servitisation.

The digital economy is driven by hyperscale and microcare. It is absolutely essential that we offer scalable online services which take over tasks from consumers and/or business users, while also being user-friendly. We wanted to know the opinion of decision-makers about this and spoke with Nadja Desmet, founder of Socialemediaburo.be and Someflex and elected 'West-Flemish promising SME of the year'.

The lack of access to customer data should not be seen as a problem only pertaining to product manufacturers. Mainly for customers this results in several financial complications such as reactive instead of proactive maintenance, no access to future/novel product optimisations, and unavailability of customised services. The InsightProducts project supports companies to improve their product and service offering through qualitative product data acquisition and use in view of digital servitisation.