Initial Situation
- A global automotive OEM had plans to complement their existing business model with services for the maintenance and repair industry, wherein the company’s vehicles are predominantly used
- The client was in the conception phase of developing a platform for craftsmen and service fleets which consisted of wireless tracing of tools and devices in real-time (part of connected vehicle offering)
- To optimally tailor the offering, focus was then placed on surveying the market for similar products and obstacles for further development
Project Objectives
- Identification of similar offerings in the market, analysed along provider, technology and product capability levels
- Current state and future potental of in-vehicle tool tracking and related segments like predictive maintenance services and tool pooling
- Prioritization of current customer needs and desired benefits
- Coverage of client-defined use cases and value chain in the maintenance industry by competing solutions; determination of prevalent pricing models in the market, including hardware and associated software
challenges we faced
- Difficulty in finding information from the customer side, because of the low number of publications involving craftsmen as well as low degree of digitalization
- Products in the market serving a multitude of use cases, with different specifications and connectivity technologies– documentation not homogeneous
Preliminary research results
The project started off with a longlist which had the research results and evaluation of 20-30 leading solutions in the market, along various criteria including feature and use case coverage, company size and geographic reach
Analysing identified solutions
Using knockout criteria and an internally developed scoring model, the top 10 solutions were identified. These 10 solutions were subject to a comprehensive analysis which included expert interviews to address information gaps
Additional research
Provider-side interviews and research also included insights about pricing models
Identifiying consumer preferences
Around half the interviews were from a customer perspective, including actual end users (craftsmen) and target companies for the solution, to help compile and evaluate most important customer needs in the segment
Customer point of view
Project team additionally visited a leading craftsman fair in Germany to get in contact with the target group specific decision makers for ad-hoc customer-side interviews