Visualizing Service Contracts -- The Case of an Equipment Manufacturer

This paper presents the case of an industrial equipment manufacturer facing the challenge of selling services. The main source for confusion was the complexity of the services and the multiplicity of options offered to the customers. It was hard to have a clear picture of what entitlements or responsibilities followed from the choices, and draft a contract accordingly. The company decided to try visualization to facilitate communication and to clarify the service content. The experiment provided valuable insight into the possibilities and limitations of contract visualization in the context of industrial service contracts. The conclusion was that visuals can help but are not the answer to all communication problems. It is for example essential to fit the visual content to the targeted audience and to make sure that the text that is going to be visualized is understood correctly in the first place.