Hygiene Chemicals Manufacturer Designs and Creates New IoT-Enabled Smart Systems and Services Offerings

Our client, a manufacturer and provider of cleaning and hygiene products in the hospitality, healthcare, food and beverage, food service, retail and facility management sectors as well as robotic floor care machines and technology-enabled food safety, water and energy management services, reached out to enlist Harbor to assist with development and execution of its digital innovation strategy.

Our client’s senior leadership found themselves being regularly challenged in their quarterly performance and earnings calls by equity analysts asking probing questions about the company’s digital strategy efforts. As a result, the CEO initiated a three day workshop focused on new digital solution opportunities.  As a result of the digital workshop, the company’s leadership team declared its strategic goal to embrace new digital and IoT technologies to help differentiate new solutions for its diverse customers.   Due to previous engagements we conducted focused on future customer needs, requirements and buying behaviors we were engaged to help facilitate the workshop and subsequent program to accelerate their digital strategy and solutions development. 

By first helping our client to form a digital and IoT strategy team and charter, we assisted in organizing over 20 disparate on-going projects and unifying a digital strategy process to evaluate which projects were worth investing in and developing.  Following this, we assisted in the following processes and development efforts, including:

1. Working with the client team to analyze and anticipate future customer needs and how smart systems and IoT technologies will change customer needs, buying behaviors and requirements and helping to identify the impact of new digital and IoT solutions on the company’s financial performance.
2. Assessing which projects and programs should be funded moving forward and helping teams to develop business cases and determine which technologies should be sourced and which should be developed internally.
3. Helping to organize a new digital and IoT strategy and governance schema.
4. Examining the alignment of projects and programs with the existing organization and the impacts relationships across the business would have on the effectiveness of new digital initiatives and their related role, mission and objectives.
5. Analyzing the requirements for a multi-business smart systems and IoT delivery platform, including requirements for connectivity, data management and services delivery and platform solutions?
6. Helping to define new organizational roles for data sciences and analytics to address new optimization opportunities and assisting with recruiting early candidates.

7. Developing new business and revenue models that could help accelerate adoption as well as develop the underlying business case framework, methodology and metrics the company would utilize to focus on the attractive opportunities.

8. Working with the client’s steering group to chart its digital road map including what investments should get priority: platform innovations, data architecture and analytics, collaboration with key stakeholders, etc. for development of new services  

Underlying these process steps, Harbor facilitated development of our client’s architecture, platform and technical development and sourcing strategy helping the organization to quickly put its arms around the many and diverse elements required to realize new digital services.

Being uncharted territory for the client, our team worked closely with their business leaders, technologists, and services management to understand future user needs, new business models, solution pricing and monetization as well as establish an IoT architecture and platform strategy.

The combination of the above processes has accelerated the development and market introduction  of a suite of new digital solutions within targeted customer and application segments that are driving new revenue streams and new customer value.