Topic
Helping Automotive Leader Scale Their Digital Transformation Journey
About the company
Another business that undertook a digital transformation is a leading automotive technology company with over 70 years of experience in the development and optimization of powertrain systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, construction, locomotive, aviation, marine, etc. The company has more than 45 engineering centers across the globe and employs over 10,000 people
Undertaking a digital transformation
The company was looking for a software development partner to help them undertake another digital transformation phase as the company has a lot of manual processes, which called for automating.
What’s more, the company has a complex organizational structure, which comprises multiple independent departments. Each of the departments creates a number of standalone solutions for internal use and customer projects. Some of these applications have quite similar features. However, there used to be no solution to reuse the applications with similar functionality.
To scale their digital transformation, optimize operations, and reduce costs, The company needed to develop a SaaS platform that would help them standardize and streamline the development of digital products of different departments.
However, first, the company needed to validate the product idea, measure its ROI, and mitigate potential risks. Also, the company was looking for consulting and additional expertise in cloud software development.
To validate the product idea, our client has set on digitizing the preparation of vehicle benchmarking reports for customers as the manual process was inefficient and time-consuming.
Unveiling the business value
SBase Technologies helped the company to understand under what circumstances the platform would be profitable for the company. To do it, we conducted two Discovery Phases – the main Discovery phase focused on the product and a Business Strategy Discovery focused on unveiling its business value.
In terms of the Business Strategy Discovery, SBase Technologies experts prepared a comparative analysis of two scenarios: a case when a department develops a solution with the help of the SaaS platform and the case when it develops a solution on its own. The estimates show how much the company needs to initially invest in platform development and how much money a department can save if they decide to develop its solution on the platform vs developing a solution on its own.
Also, SBase Technologies specialists interviewed several client’s teams to better understand the client’s business needs and the functionality of each solution. Also, we conducted a number of workshops to formulate the product vision and develop the value proposition canvas. Then, we determined what they have in common and came up with several key components.
In terms of the Product Discovery Phase, we prepared a detailed product requirements specification that describes the project, its goals, features, the optimum technology stack, and architecture overview.
As a result of the Discovery Phases, SBase Technologies experts provided a high-level project plan with clear functional requirements, built UX/UI prototypes of the cloud-based SaaS platform and a benchmarking app hosted on it, and estimated the time and money needed to turn the idea into an MVP or a full-fledged product.
Our client received all the necessary deliverables to kick off the implementation phase successfully, including templates to evaluate whether it is more profitable to develop a solution on its SaaS platform or invest in the development of a certain type of service.
Benefits: Evidence-based decision making to avoid risks amid turbulent economic times
Based on the results of the Business Strategy Discovery, the client decided to build the SaaS platform.
The benchmarking solution hosted on a SaaS platform integrates all available vehicle benchmarks previously researched by the client and is projected to:
- Reduce man-hours by 1.5 times if the application is hosted on the platform rather than developed on its own, and, therefore, save operating costs in the long run.
- Replace the two-week manual process of preparing the benchmarking reports for customers and enable internal application users to publish new benchmark reports, update pricing, and manage a customer’s access based on subscriptions purchase.
- Provide flexibility for clients (OEMs) to select benchmarks and payment options in their subscription accounts.