Anticipated scarcity of natural resources and concern for the sustainable development forcing manufacturing industries to emphasise on conservation of resources on one hand. On the other hand high competition in the manufacturing industry is forcing companies to look for innovative value propositions. Service based business models are emerging business solutions that fulfil the functional needs of customers. Such business approach demands extensive and sophisticated information collection, sharing and management systems. However, there are evidences of knowledge gap when it comes to defining information requirements, information management and sharing systems needed to adopt such business models. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of research done in the area of service based business models in terms of information management and communication systems. The paper also includes result of two case studies done in two different manufacturing companies with the purposes to understand information requirements to adopt service based business models.