127 Yann Toutant: getting started with As-a-Service

Guest bio

Yann Toutant is a European from France; he has lived and worked in the U.S., Spain, Belgium, and Scandinavia. He now bases from The Netherlands whilst embracing the location-independent entrepreneur leadership style. 

He is passionate about bridging cultural gaps between countries which has materialised in his role as President of the French Chamber of Commerce in The Netherlands. He takes pleasure in supporting the business corridors between the two countries; animating the community of French/Dutch entrepreneurs and C-level executives to foster and reinforce the strong economic link between these main players on the European scene. 

Impressions versus possessions: the new key driver of many decisions in our society. 

Yann is a strong believer that the ‘location independence’ movement, focusing on impressions versus possessions, offers new opportunities to corporates and is a great booster for As-A-Service offers, especially in these post-pandemic times. From his own experience as a CEO, he knows that many CEOs are dealing with three major stones in their shoes: shifting business models, integrating startups, and attracting the “Y” generation. The mind shift from possessions to impressions provides solutions from the inside. He loves to integrate this way of working in the projects he runs as well as in his personal lifestyle. 

Along with his 20+ years of professional journey, he has taken up demanding roles in sales, change management, general management and consulting. As a manager, speaker, coach or mediator, he always strives to integrate the professional growth of those he interacts with. This requires getting people out of their comfort zones. He firmly believes that this helps them grow faster. Delivering results by developing people at the same time energizes him to move to the next challenge. 

When not dedicating time to work, Yann loves sailing to unwind and leave the shore for a few days. Yann enjoys the opportunity to embrace the world he lives in with a single glance. Being able to stand at the back of a boat and see how it represents a limited space containing all the resources and goods needed to make a journey, to reach his goal. “Tame the elements without shouting it from the rooftops” is one of his taglines. 

About Black Winch 

Black Winch supports organisations in turning a product-based business into a subscription model and moving from transferring ownership to providing usership. 

Today’s consumers and businesses want to use instead of owning. But that doesn’t have to mean that in this service-based economy, product-based businesses have a limited shelf-life. The successful subscription model approach can be applied to product-based businesses and create new business models. 

All along his 18 years of experience in the ICT industry, he has supported a significant number of manufacturers or service providers to implement As-A-Service business models, always including a product. And, when a product is part of an As-A-Service solution, it has its challenges to implement since it requires specific skills such as marketing and commercial cultural change. But most of all it requires the mastership of a skill called “financial engineering” to secure the scalability of the offers. 

As a founder of Black Winch, he has gathered a team of experts from the industry to concentrate expertise in the key areas necessary to a successful and long-lasting As-A-Service business model. 

The mission nowadays with Black Winch is to bring this knowledge and expertise from the IT world to any type of industry. The aim of Black Winch is to help entrepreneurs to shift business models in a secure way, to satisfy their existing customers or acquire new ones, whilst generating new profit streams. 

Each Black Winch customer has a different setting: from evaluating the potential and feasibility of an As-A-Service go-to market, to improving the profitability of existing ones. 

Black Winch covers the large scope of requests in supporting customers and shareholders reach their strategic goals thanks to As-A-Service solutions. 

Book: As A Service 

Yann’s first Book, ‘As-A-Service’ – How to turn your product based business into a subscription model was published in 2022 with the aim of spreading his commitment to connect As-A-Service and circularity.

Yann is a passionate advocate for the circular economy and believes manufacturers have the power to make steps towards preserving our earth’s precious resources. One way to do this is to shift their business from being product-based to an “As-A-Service” subscription model. As-A-Service allows manufacturers to remain owners of their products, transferring “usership” instead of ownership, to their customers. This means being responsible for creating a great customer experience and service, as well as reusing and recycling materials – something customers are increasingly requesting. 

But how do you turn a product-based business into As-A-Service? How to navigate from using this buzzword to actually implementing a successful and scalable in-house AS-A-Service business model? There is a large selection of books available about software As-A-Service, but none of them addressed product-based businesses. This, along with Yanns years of experience both personally and within his career lead him to the decision to write his first book on the subject.