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Information technology (IT) suppliers play a crucial role in shaping digitally-enabled services in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector, addressing limitations such as limited resources, a lack of digital expertise and financial constraints. This study investigates how manufacturing SMEs involve IT suppliers in digitally-enabled service offerings.

This paper investigates six manufacturing SMEs involving suppliers in digitally-enabled services. Data were collected via 20 in-depth interviews.

This study identifies SMEs’ sensing capabilities influencing their digitally-enabled services, including responding to industry and market demands, assessing customer readiness, developing responses to crises, and understanding IT suppliers’ offerings and capabilities. Three clusters of SMEs are introduced: operational efficiency seekers, service growth seekers and service-centric SMEs, based on their seizing capability through analyzing how different SMEs position services within the business strategy, allocate and manage service resources and build and leverage digital capabilities and readiness. These differ in how they involve IT suppliers: operational involvement, innovation collaboration and strategic partnership.

This research illuminates how digitally-enabled services and IT supplier involvement differ in SME environments. Analysis of SMEs’ digitally-enabled services and capabilities prompts a novel three-cluster framework. The findings unveil how manufacturing SMEs involve IT suppliers in digital servitization as it relates to the SMEs’ dynamic capabilities.

Manufacturers face various challenges and risks during their digital servitization (DS), due to the complexity caused by introducing breakthrough technologies, increasingly complex product-service solutions and new stakeholders in the business network. The process necessitates the implementation of various changes that usually happen over a long period of time. Using complexity management as a theoretical lens, this paper delves into manufacturers’ DS journeys and explores how manufacturers manage the associated complexities.

This paper investigates the DS journey of two manufacturers in a longitudinal case study from 2014 to 2021.

Three main complexity management actions during the DS journey were identified: shaping the digital service system, shaping the organization and shaping the network. Tied to different types of complexities, these actions demonstrate how manufacturers navigate their journey. The findings also reveal different complexity management approaches used at the different stages of this journey.

This paper offers a comprehensive framework for understanding complexity management in the DS journey, including the types of complexities, complexity management actions and complexity management approaches and their rationale. This paper shows that different requirements are created during emerge, consolidate and evolve stages of the DS journey. Manufacturers need a dynamic approach that considers changes in complexities and actions over time.