## 4 Conclusions  
Besides the vast advantages stemming from the application of an adequate servitization strategy, certain challenges and drawbacks may occur, which by all means have to be taken into consideration and measures are to be applied to diminish undesired effects. Moving along the transition line between the two extremes of a pure manufacturer and a pure service provider offers various opportunities to benefit from higher profit margins on services [6; 21; 93; 114]. Though, many companies fail to take advantage of these opportunities, and therefore are struggling with the so-called \"service paradox\", since the added services do not or not sufficiently contribute to total revenues.  
One of the most distinctive challenges concerning servitizition constitutes in managerial issues, since the complex and comprehensive implementation of a new strategy is a challenging managerial task in any case. Complexity is even intensified by diverging beliefs of goods manufacturers and service providers. Hence, manufacturers try to benefit from economies of scale, which demands for standardization of production processes and products per se. However, service providers, in contrast, have to customize their products to meet customer needs and raise the customers' satisfaction with the product [6]. Therefore, based on literature we suggest a distinction between internal back-end challenges and customer-facing front-end issues to bring servitization into use. For back-end tasks we elaborate on organizational structure issues, considerations regarding the trade-off between customer satisfaction and productivity, as well as on supplier relationships. For front-end challenges we explain their derivation, since they mainly stem from precedent customer requirements. Moreover, a relevant pricing and the inherent shift of risks towards supplier are discussed in depth. Finally, the aim of a company applying servitization is constituted by gaining certain advantages concerning financial, strategic or marketing issues, through operating somewhere on the transition line on the product-service continuum [6].  
The future of servitization is driven by innovative ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) technologies [115] and by enterprises investing into those technologies and exploiting the business potential coming along with those technologies. Services delivered via cloud computing, business analytics, or data mining are only few examples of recent technology-driven possibilities supporting and improving customer relationship management. Taking into consideration these aspects,our further research tasks comprise the explorations on how and to which extent enhanced ICT technologies are influencing the development of servitization in enterprises. This research question could be tackled by a selective and stepwise approach using methods of case study research (e.g., [116]). A large-scale, systematized approach would suggest a modular research design by various criteria, for example by enterprise size (small and medium enterprises, large enterprises, multinationals etc.), by region (e.g., Eurozone, North America, Australia, etc.), or by sector (e.g., hospitality, logistics, automotive etc.).  
Authors contributed equally to the presented work. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Open Access Funding by the University of Vienna.  
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.