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Assistive Control is an assistive technology company.
Assistive technology is the generic term for any technology that's designed and
developed for somebody
with a disability. We're really all about independent access to assistive technology
so we've developed a range of hardware devices which enable someone to access a PC,
who can't use a keyboard and a mouse.
We're very new to the marketplace, in a certain sense. There are a couple of
companies that are very much seen as the market leaders.
There's a particular software company, that has a
very well-known set of software for people with disabilities.
Where we feel we stand out is that our software's
all been designed for ease of access
and independent use. We were introduced to Aston Business School by
our MAS advisor; we had a meeting with him and he talked to us
about the servitization project.
He thought we were a company that would be well suited to it, so we arranged to
meet him. Had a meeting with him and I think - from that - we were one of the
first companies to get
involved with the program.
Servitization is simple. It's about manufacturing companies
competing, not just through the products they produce
but through the services that those products enable.
So what we did - we went to Assistive Control initially and we spoke to them about their products,
about the customer, about their organization, and
they introduced us to this new product that they had been creating,
a product that they were trying to get into the marketplace, trying to compete against
these established customers.
So what we then did was we brought them along to Aston,
we took them through - in the first instances - a workshop,
which lasted two days. At that workshop, we got them to think about
their customer, we got them to think about the capability that their customer actually needed.
And we got them to think about their own practices, their own technologies
that they would need to put in place to deliver a service to their customer,
rather than simply to sell a product in the High Street.
So what it gave us was a very good
overall view of what servitization was all about; we learned a lot about how...
how it relates to very large companies but we could also see
that we could filter that down to what we are essentially - a start-up.
Part of the whole workshop was quite hands-on. There was
work to take home, work to do - what it meant was that I did sit down with
my other director and we did actually rethink
a lot of our business plan, re-thought our strategy and started to realize how
valuable it would be to offer services alongside our products.
So Assistive Control is a company which is
very early in its journey to embrace services.
I think the biggest change has been their own mindset;
this idea that they can get their
IP into the market, not just through products
but actually through the services those products enable and ultimately it's a
great benefit to the customer
because rather than simply having a piece of technology,
they get a much better experience through the use
of that technology. So the biggest change
has actually been to the mindset within Assistive Control,
getting them to understand their business is about services,
rather than simply about the production of products.
Our next step is to make sure that we have
adequate support staff and a support structure
in place to ensure that we can deliver those services
as well as possible, to ensure that our clients get the best of our technology
and the services that we can provide for them.