With consulting services around the topics of digitization, agile transformation, and project management, acterience supports its customers holistically and accompanies project plans from planning to operational realization and implementation. acterience basically serves large and medium-sized companies of all industries with a focus on the insurance sector, the automotive sector, and the industry with its consulting services.
The challenge
Customer centricity in product development sees consumers rather than products as the starting point for new developments; all process steps start with the needs and wishes of consumers. So far, so well known. – However, the concrete implementation of such a comprehensive customer orientation is easier said than done.
Customer-oriented and client-centric product development involves consumers at all levels – from initial needs exploration to roll-out and lifecycle management:
1. Exploration
Market research needs and search field analysis.
2. Validation and definition
Idea generation with feasibility and viability requirements, idea & concept generation, and early customer validation.
3. Product & service development/project management
Building requirements management & concept development, service design & UX competencies to ensure customer centricity, project execution and project management, software, UX, and engineering skills to develop services and products, testing and validation.
4. Roll out & lifecycle management
Product management during roll-out, continuous exploration of the evolving market and its needs, and systematic integration of market feedback.
Along these process steps, customer centricity and user experience must not fall victim to other aspects, such as technical feasibility or cost pressure. Contact persons in the exploration phase must also be involved in the handover to development and ultimately in implementation so that there is no break in the product development process and so those important findings from the exploration phase – and thus the customer need per se – are not diluted by technical or financial restrictions.
The method: Collaboration
HYVE and acterience pursue a joint approach that aims at a stringency of Customer Centricity throughout the entire product development process by relying on HYVE experts from the Customer Focus area as well as on acterience’s technical support of the implementation.
Projects are managed from start to finish with an overarching, agile project management approach that minimizes friction and knowledge loss through handovers and ensures that customer focus and technical feasibility remain equally in view.
The benefit
By collaborating with acterience, we create more efficient processes in product development because we eliminate handover losses. We make sure that what the customer tells us at the beginning is reflected in exactly the same way in the product at the end. This enables consistent customer centricity.
Giordano Koch, Managing director HYVE
Our joint successes so far:
In the automotive context, we have already been able to create added value for our joint customers by:
- making optimal use of synergies among different stakeholders
- integrating the customer’s perspective and feedback directly into the implementation phase
- making customer wishes/needs/pain points known to those who develop and implement products and services
- Translate the language and voice of end users into technical and process-related jargon in a semantic context.
