Why Elevator OEMs Are Losing Service Revenue After Installation
Elevator OEMs often lose profitable service contracts after installation. Discover the causes behind revenue leakage and strategies to improve retention.
TL;DR – How Connected Services Create Recurring Revenue for Elevator OEMs
Connected services allow elevator OEMs to turn installed assets into ongoing sources of customer value and recurring revenue. By combining connected monitoring, predictive insights, fleet analytics and digital services, OEMs can move beyond traditional maintenance models and monetize the elevator lifecycle.
- Move beyond equipment sales: Connected services allow OEMs to continue creating value after installation by extending the commercial relationship across the entire elevator lifecycle.
- Create new recurring revenue streams: Remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, fleet analytics, digital reporting and other connected services can be offered as recurring subscriptions or premium AMC services.
- Increase revenue per customer: OEMs can progressively expand from traditional AMCs to Connected AMCs, predictive services, fleet intelligence and outcome-based service offerings.
- Sell outcomes, not connectivity: Customers are interested in higher uptime, faster issue resolution, fewer unexpected failures and greater service transparency, rather than connectivity alone.
- Strengthen customer relationships: Digital dashboards, performance reports, service insights and continuous asset visibility keep OEMs connected with customers between maintenance visits and contract renewals.
- Turn the installed base into a strategic asset: Operational data from connected elevators can help OEMs improve maintenance, reduce warranty costs, identify recurring faults and strengthen future product development.
Connected services transform elevators from one-time equipment sales into long-term digital revenue opportunities, helping OEMs monetize the asset throughout its operational lifecycle.
The Shift from Selling Elevators to Selling Long-Term Value
For decades, elevator manufacturers have operated around a familiar commercial model: design and sell the equipment, complete installation, provide warranty support, and secure an Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC). Spare parts, repairs, and modernization create additional revenue throughout the asset lifecycle.
But the economics of the industry are changing. Competition is increasing, hardware differentiation is becoming harder to sustain, and building owners increasingly expect measurable service outcomes rather than periodic maintenance visits. They want higher uptime, faster response, transparent reporting, predictable maintenance, and better visibility into how their assets are performing.
This creates a new opportunity for elevator OEMs. Instead of treating an elevator installation as the completion of a sale, manufacturers can use connected services to create an ongoing digital relationship with every installed asset. The shift is from selling equipment and maintaining equipment to connecting equipment, delivering measurable outcomes, and creating recurring digital value.
Connected services can therefore become more than a technology investment. They can become a new business model for generating recurring revenue throughout the elevator lifecycle.
Why Traditional Elevator Revenue Models Need to Evolve
Most elevator OEMs generate revenue through equipment sales, installation, maintenance contracts, spare parts, and modernization. AMCs already provide recurring income, but traditional maintenance models have limitations. Service delivery is often labour-intensive, preventive maintenance is generally scheduled around fixed intervals, and service teams may have limited visibility into asset performance between site visits.
This creates two commercial challenges. First, OEMs can become vulnerable to price-based competition when customers perceive maintenance contracts as similar. Second, revenue remains closely tied to physical service activity rather than scalable digital services.
Connected services provide a way to change this model. By continuously connecting installed elevators to a digital platform, OEMs can introduce new services that create value between maintenance visits and generate additional recurring revenue without requiring another equipment sale.
Turn Your Elevator Fleet into a Connected Service
Monitor elevator health, performance and critical parameters in real time. DATOMS helps elevator OEMs, service teams and facility operators improve visibility, detect issues earlier and build smarter connected services around their installed base.
Connected Services Turn Installed Elevators Into Digital Revenue Opportunities
A connected elevator combines operational data from controllers, sensors, gateways, and equipment interfaces with cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and service workflows. However, connectivity itself is not the product. The commercial value comes from what the OEM does with the resulting data.
Connected elevators can support remote monitoring, real-time fault alerts, equipment health reporting, predictive maintenance insights, fleet analytics, digital compliance reporting, customer dashboards, and performance-based services.
This creates a fundamental shift. The OEM is no longer selling only an elevator and an AMC. It can build a connected service portfolio around every elevator already installed.
The installed base becomes an opportunity to create new digital services, increase customer engagement, and generate recurring revenue throughout the asset lifecycle.
From AMC to Connected Service Portfolios
Traditional AMC contracts generally combine preventive maintenance, inspections, breakdown support, and repairs. Connected services allow OEMs to build additional layers of value around this foundation.
A Connected AMC can combine traditional maintenance with 24/7 remote monitoring, real-time fault alerts, digital service history, and uptime reporting. A more advanced Predictive Service offering can add equipment health indicators, fault trend analysis, condition-based maintenance recommendations, and early warning alerts.
For customers operating large elevator portfolios, OEMs can introduce Enterprise Fleet Intelligence, providing multi-site dashboards, regional performance analysis, SLA monitoring, asset benchmarking, and service analytics.
At the most advanced level, OEMs can move toward Outcome-Based Service, where contracts focus on measurable outcomes such as availability, uptime, response time, resolution time, and reliability.
This progression allows manufacturers to move from traditional maintenance revenue toward higher-value connected service revenue.
Five Revenue Opportunities Enabled by Connected Services
Connected services can create several recurring revenue opportunities for elevator OEMs.
1. Remote Monitoring Subscriptions
OEMs can provide customers with continuous visibility into elevator status, faults, usage, and operational trends through remote monitoring subscriptions. This service can be priced per elevator, per site, or bundled into a connected AMC.
2. Predictive Maintenance Services
Predictive maintenance uses operational data to identify abnormal patterns and potential equipment issues before they result in failures. OEMs can package these insights as premium services for customers looking to reduce unexpected downtime and improve equipment availability.
3. Fleet Analytics
Fleet analytics can become particularly valuable for large customers managing elevators across multiple buildings and cities. OEMs can provide portfolio-level visibility into uptime, downtime, fault frequency, usage patterns, recurring issues, and service performance.
4. Digital Reporting and Compliance Services
Customers increasingly need documentation for internal audits, facility management, regulatory requirements, and service reviews. Automated reports covering maintenance history, fault history, uptime, SLA performance, and asset information can become part of premium digital service packages.
5. Outcome-Based Service Agreements
Outcome-based agreements can move the commercial relationship beyond maintenance activities. Instead of selling a fixed number of maintenance visits, OEMs can increasingly focus on measurable outcomes such as equipment availability, response time, and operational reliability.
Connected data makes these outcomes measurable and provides the foundation for performance-oriented service contracts.
Customers Pay for Outcomes, Not Connectivity
Customers do not invest in connected elevators simply because they want more data. Building owners and facility managers invest in connected services because they want better outcomes.
They want higher availability, faster issue resolution, fewer unexpected failures, better service transparency, predictable maintenance, and greater control over their assets.
This distinction is critical. Connectivity is the infrastructure. Outcomes are the product.
Remote monitoring enables earlier fault detection. Earlier detection enables faster intervention. Faster intervention can reduce downtime. Lower downtime improves the customer experience and increases the perceived value of the service.
For OEMs, this creates a stronger commercial proposition. Instead of selling technology, they can sell measurable operational improvements.
Connected Services Increase Revenue Per Customer
Connected services can do more than create a new subscription line. They can increase the total value generated from each customer relationship.
A typical customer journey could evolve from an elevator purchase to an AMC, then to a Connected AMC, followed by predictive service, fleet analytics, and enterprise digital services. Modernization opportunities can also be identified using the operational intelligence generated across the connected installed base.
Each stage creates an opportunity to introduce additional value without requiring another equipment sale.
This changes the commercial question from:
“How do we sell another elevator?”
to:
“How do we create more value from every elevator we already have installed?”
This approach can increase customer lifetime value while creating more predictable recurring revenue.
From Connected Assets to Outcome-Based Services
Connected services also enable a broader transformation known as servitization, which is the shift from selling products toward selling services, performance, and outcomes around those products.
For elevator OEMs, this progression can move from product sales to product and service offerings, then to connected products, connected services, performance services, and eventually outcome-based services.
The connected installed base becomes the foundation for this transformation. Without continuous asset data, service outcomes are difficult to measure. With connected data, uptime, response, reliability, and service performance become visible and measurable.
This gives OEMs the ability to differentiate through outcomes rather than competing primarily on AMC price.
The Connected Installed Base Becomes a Strategic Asset
Every connected elevator generates information about how equipment performs in real-world conditions. Across a large installed base, this information becomes strategically valuable.
OEMs can identify recurring fault patterns, frequently failing components, high-usage assets, warranty trends, service performance, and product reliability issues. These insights can improve product engineering, warranty management, maintenance strategies, and future elevator designs.
The installed base therefore becomes more than a collection of machines. It becomes a continuous source of operational and commercial intelligence.
Build Connected Services Without Building the Technology Stack In-House
Launching a connected service business requires more than connecting an elevator controller. OEMs need infrastructure for device connectivity, data ingestion, asset management, monitoring, alerts, analytics, dashboards, reporting, user management, security, and scalable cloud operations.
Building these capabilities internally can require significant engineering resources and long development cycles.
DATOMS helps elevator manufacturers build connected service operations across their installed base. The platform enables OEMs to connect elevators, monitor operational parameters, detect faults, generate alerts, analyze fleet performance, and provide digital visibility to service and customer teams.
This provides the technology foundation for offerings such as Connected AMC, remote monitoring, predictive service, fleet analytics, digital reporting, customer dashboards, and performance-based services.
The objective is not simply to make elevators connected. It is to help OEMs turn connectivity into measurable customer value and recurring business revenue.
The Future of Elevator Revenue Is Lifecycle-Based
The next phase of growth for elevator OEMs will not come solely from selling more equipment. It will come from creating more value from the equipment already installed.
Connected services enable OEMs to extend the commercial relationship beyond installation and traditional maintenance. They can create recurring digital revenue, increase revenue per customer, strengthen service relationships, improve operational efficiency, and develop new performance-based offerings.
The transformation is therefore bigger than IoT. It is a shift in the business model.
From selling elevators to monetizing the lifecycle of every connected elevator.
Conclusion
Connected services give elevator OEMs an opportunity to transform their installed base into a long-term source of recurring value. By combining remote monitoring, predictive insights, fleet analytics, digital reporting, and outcome-based services, manufacturers can move beyond traditional maintenance models and build deeper, more valuable customer relationships.
The future of elevator manufacturing will not be defined only by the quality of the equipment installed today. It will increasingly be defined by the value an OEM continues to deliver throughout that equipment’s operational life.
The manufacturers that succeed will be those that do not stop earning when the elevator is installed. They will continue creating and monetizing value throughout its lifecycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do connected services create recurring revenue for elevator OEMs?
Connected services allow elevator OEMs to monetize their installed base through recurring offerings such as remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, fleet analytics, digital reporting, and performance-based services. These capabilities can be offered as subscriptions or as premium layers within existing AMC contracts.
What are connected services for elevator manufacturers?
Connected services are digital services built around connected elevator assets. They can include remote monitoring, fault alerts, predictive maintenance, fleet analytics, uptime reporting, digital compliance, customer dashboards, and service performance monitoring.
How can elevator OEMs increase aftermarket revenue?
Elevator OEMs can increase aftermarket revenue by combining traditional AMCs with connected services, predictive maintenance, digital fleet management, spare parts opportunities, modernization, and outcome-based service offerings.
What is elevator servitization?
Elevator servitization is the shift from selling elevators primarily as physical products toward generating ongoing revenue through maintenance, digital services, performance-based contracts, analytics, and lifecycle solutions.
Can connected elevator services be offered as a subscription?
Yes. OEMs can package remote monitoring, analytics, predictive maintenance, reporting, fleet management, and other digital capabilities as recurring monthly or annual services, either independently or as part of a Connected AMC.
Ready to Build Recurring Revenue Beyond Equipment Sales?
DATOMS helps elevator manufacturers turn connected assets into connected service businesses with real-time monitoring, fleet-wide visibility, predictive service insights, digital reporting, and scalable Industrial IoT infrastructure.
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