Situation
Developing new product ideas is vital to meeting consumer demands and staying competitive in the auto industry. A multinational automotive corporation in the Netherlands planned to strengthen its competitive edge by merging with another enterprise to expand its portfolio of distinctive, sustainable vehicles. The company sought to develop a sophisticated digital tool that would enable its combined teams to collaborate on reimagining vehicle features with innovation ideas. It envisioned a globally integrated, centralized platform that would replace manual Excel-based processes and provide a streamlined way to manage and tracks ideas for updating products, experiences, and features. By adopting a new digital workflow, the company could empower employees to develop vehicle features that customers demand while opening new business opportunities.
Solution
Working with Wipro, the company developed and deployed the Global Idea Feature Tracker (GIFT). Built on the Pega Platform, GIFT allowed the organization to gather new ideas from all possible contributors in a single geography, tracking innovation ideas from inception to implementation. This centralized repository enabled the company to improve both transparency and communication between product and idea-generation teams.
The business also implemented a structured digital workflow to evaluate the proposed ideas. Automated checks and balances provided automatic review prompts to ensure timely reviews and evaluations for selecting the best proposals. With documents residing in a single location, manually maintaining multiple versions of Excel and PowerPoint documents was no longer necessary, and the reporting process was accelerated and simplified.
The organization could also more efficiently capture and track various idea-generation metrics, such as the percentage of ideas submitted versus those that had been implemented, the estimated cost savings, and new revenues generated by recent ideas. Real-time dashboards enabled the company to take steps toward achieving its long-range plan of updating automotive features, broken down by region, vehicle, and different programs, and the decision-making process for executing new ideas was significantly accelerated.
Outcome
GIFT enabled the corporation to modernize how it develops new ideas for automotive features and functionalities, reducing the publishing times of its Feature Long-Range plan from three months to a single day. With GIFT’s integration and Pega Platform-based capabilities, the full range of talent across the merged companies could collaborate more effectively and create the kinds of innovations that set new industry standards. More than 60 innovation ideas qualified as customer feature requirements (CFRs) in the first month, and due to easy access to the platform, the teams generated more than 400 ideas and began building a more innovation-focused culture.
Following GIFT’s initial success in one geography, the company planned to roll out the platform across its global operations. By improving its digital workflows and enabling faster innovations, the organization enhanced its competitive edge and ability to deliver the next-generation driving experiences that customers are seeking.