In the rapidly evolving landscape of industrial technology, predictive maintenance and condition monitoring have become essential for optimizing operations and minimizing downtime across different industrial applications.

However, the market for these solutions is highly competitive and fragmented, with major players like AWS, IBM, Siemens, and GE dominating alongside niche competitors.

For businesses like ABB Ability, navigating this dynamic environment requires a deep understanding of digital market positioning, competitive advantages, and areas for improvement. This is where digital due diligence becomes a critical tool.

Understanding the Business Case Through Digital Due Diligence

To define ABB Ability’s preliminary business case, a structured methodology was employed, combining competitive analysis, market insights, and growth opportunity identification. This approach enabled ABB to benchmark its digital presence, assess industry trends, and explore scalable solutions tailored to its strategic objectives.

At the core of this analysis was the layering method, a structured approach that examined publicly available data to understand the competitive landscape. The insights drawn from this assessment provided a solid foundation for positioning ABB Ability effectively against its competitors.

The Market Challenge: ABB Ability’s Position in a Competitive Landscape

ABB, a Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation specializing in electrical engineering and automation, developed ABB Ability—a portfolio of digital solutions designed to enhance industrial operations through connectivity and software innovation. Among its offerings, the ABB Ability Smart Sensor, launched in 2016, was designed to revolutionize maintenance by predicting equipment failures and minimizing downtime.

Despite the technical robustness of its solutions, ABB Ability faced stagnation in digital interest and market growth. The challenge stemmed from intense competition, with both established players and new entrants, including startups, aggressively expanding their market share.

Digital Market Insights: Findings from Digital Due Diligence

The demand for predictive maintenance solutions has surged, with digital interest increasing steadily over the years in both condition-based maintenance and predictive maintenance.

The global predictive maintenance market, valued at USD 4.16 billion in 2021, is expected to continue its rapid growth at a CAGR of 30.9% until 2030. Companies across various industries are actively investing in big data and advanced analytics to drive efficiency, with 93% of firms earning over USD 100 million already integrating these solutions into their operations.

The Competitive Landscape in Predictive Maintenance

The predictive maintenance market is characterized by rapid growth and intense competition. There are two primary segments within the competitive landscape: software-first and hardware-first approaches. While software-first solutions, led by companies like AWS and IBM, rely on AI-driven analytics and cloud-based infrastructure, hardware-first solutions focus on sensor-based predictive maintenance integrated into industrial workflows, with Siemens and ABB as key players in this segment.

Alongside these established industry leaders, emerging startups and large-scale entrants like AWS are reshaping the market. Major players such as AWS, IBM, Siemens, and GE offer comprehensive solutions by blending software, hardware, and services, while niche players contribute by addressing specialized needs through innovative approaches.

Competitive Landscape of Strong Market Players

The competitive analysis revealed that AWS consistently outperforms other players across most digital and user experience parameters. It leads in areas such as user flow, information architecture, website engagement, and brand visibility. IBM also ranks highly, particularly excelling in documentation, support, and brand growth. Conversely, ABB shows weaker performance across several metrics, indicating opportunities for substantial improvement.

AWS demonstrated a highly optimized user journey, ensuring seamless accessibility and usability. In contrast, ABB faces significant usability challenges that create friction in the customer experience. Similarly, AWS and IBM provide well-structured and intuitive navigation, whereas ABB's website architecture presents obstacles in locating relevant content. Documentation and support are additional strengths for IBM and AWS, offering comprehensive resources that enhance user experience, while ABB’s support materials are comparatively limited.

Performance and speed analysis placed Siemens ahead, reflecting superior responsiveness and efficiency, while AWS, IBM, and ABB exhibited areas for improvement. Content penetration favored Siemens and IBM, with a more extensive library of predictive maintenance-related content, followed closely by AWS. AWS further reinforced its leadership with the highest engagement and digital brand visibility, reflecting strong user interaction and search presence. ABB, however, showed lower engagement and visibility, highlighting the need for a more robust digital strategy.

Amazon Monitron: The Key Challenger

Given AWS's dominance, a deeper comparative analysis between ABB Ability and Amazon Monitron was conducted to uncover strategic differentiators.

Market penetration data revealed that ABB and Amazon Monitron have similar search volumes, indicating comparable levels of brand awareness. However, Monitron holds a significant edge in internal brand penetration, with a much larger number of indexed pages, signaling a more robust content strategy and online presence.

Despite ABB’s earlier market entry in 2016, Amazon Monitron has rapidly established itself since its 2020 launch. ABB’s longer presence could serve as a strategic advantage if leveraged to emphasize reliability and industry expertise.

Content analysis further highlighted Amazon Monitron’s superior SEO strategy. Its landing page contains a substantially higher word count than ABB’s, indicating a more in-depth approach to information delivery and search optimization. Monitron also leads in both internal and external linking structure, reinforcing its strong content architecture, which enhances search visibility and user navigation.

Positioning and messaging also play a crucial role in differentiation. ABB focuses on condition monitoring for rotating equipment, leveraging advanced analytics for maintenance planning. Amazon Monitron, however, emphasizes its machine learning-driven approach, presenting itself as an end-to-end predictive maintenance solution.

Strategic Direction: Leveraging Digital Due Diligence for Growth

This digital due diligence assessment delivered key insights, guiding the creation of a preliminary business case and strategic roadmap for ABB Ability that matched the competitive realities of the predictive maintenance market.

The analysis underscored the importance of improving user experience, strengthening digital content, optimizing SEO strategies, and expanding online visibility. With a rapidly growing market and increasing investment in predictive maintenance solutions, ABB had the opportunity to reposition itself and drive strategic revenue growth through an enhanced digital services ecosystem.