Industry Project 2024/2025: Sumitomo

The IDBM Industry Project Course is a seven-month journey of collaboration, exploration, and innovation, where students addressing real-world challenges in collaboration with industry partners. This year, we’re inviting you to follow 10 different stories as our teams move through different stages of their project journeys.

What really makes customers choose a supplier? Is it just the price?

At first glance, price seems to dominate industrial decision-making. But as our IDBM team discovered through months of research with Sumitomo SHI FW (SFW), that’s far from the full story.

Visit to Sumitomo office

Sumitomo SHI FW has a legacy of over a hundred years in advanced boiler technology, supporting power plants around the globe with efficient and reliable energy systems. Their Long-Term Service Agreements (LTSAs) are a key part of ensuring these plants stay safe, compliant, and operational.

However, in rapidly growing markets like Southeast Asia, Sumitomo wanted to better understand what really drives customers to sign up for these agreements — or to hesitate.

Our project began in Finland, where we ran interviews with both customers and internal stakeholders to understand their expectations and values around maintenance services. Then, to get closer to Southeast Asian market realities, we left the cold of Helsinki behind and travelled to Bangkok, Thailand. There, we met with customers and local teams to hear firsthand about their experiences, challenges, and priorities.

Our visit to Sumitomo in Bangkok

Through in-depth conversations, field visits, and cultural observations, we uncovered that while price is a factor, hidden drivers such as trust, psychological safety, and long-term stability play a much bigger role. Customers want partners who understand their business challenges, provide flexible solutions, and build relationships based on reliability — not just transactions.

Enjoying Bangkok during our free time.

From these insights, we developed a strategic concept for Sumitomo: strengthening their Service Agreements by focusing on partnership, flexibility, and clearer communication of value. We even introduced the idea of a loyalty-based “Heat Points” program to reward long-term collaboration, showing how B2B service contracts can draw inspiration from loyalty models used in B2C.

After months of teamwork, countless interviews, and spirited discussions, we shared our outcomes at the IDBM Impact Gala on May 23, 2025, helping Sumitomo envision a future where customer needs are met not just through technical excellence, but through empathy, transparency, and proactive partnership.

Getting ready and presenting at the Impact Gala

Working together with Sumitomo has been an eye-opening journey for our international team. We are proud to have contributed to building more human-centered and future-proof energy solutions.

Learn more about the team:

Margo Gainska (IDBM ARTS) LinkedIn 

Nicolina Hannus (IDBM BIZ) LinkedIn 

Beam Chanyanut (IDBM CHEM) LinkedIn 

Jomi Karske (IDBM BIZ) LinkedIn 

Qing Li (IDBM ARTS) LinkedIn 

Abdul Saboor (IDBM SCI) LinkedIn