Features
29 May 18

Sofico expert session: Soft(ware)ly moving to CASE

On the road to CASE (connected, autonomous, shared, electric), a lot of new business models will emerge. The ability to adapt will make the difference between survival and demise.

That was the angle taken by Wim Bauwens, marketing and communications manager at Sofico, waking up the audience with a pertinent rhetoric question: are your systems ready for the change?

Customer centric, usage based

Mister Bauwens identifies four key trends in the mobility scene. Trend 1: interaction between technology and customer centricity. The customer demands transparency and not necessarily the product, but the customer experience offered by the provider will make all the difference.

The second trend is the evolution towards usage instead of ownership. It’s no longer about the vehicle, but about the driver. “OEMs need to reinvent themselves as mobility service providers”, Mr Bauwens finds, mentioning connected services such as pick-up & delivery, concierge services, and peer-to-peer sharing to create revenue for the subscriber and drive down the monthly rate.

“In parallel, the fleet & leasing operators are seeking greater granularity: cars need to be rented per minute, per hour, instead of per year. They are also focusing on mobility services such as car & ride sharing and multimodality.

B2B mixes with B2C

A third major trend is that B2B and B2C are converging, especially in Europe. “Next to private lease, there are now loans that come with extra services derived from a typical operating lease. At the same time, captives are going multi-make”, Mr Bauwens explains. “And then there is B2B2E: services that touch a much wider target group than just the company car drivers and involve bikes, shared cars and many other mobility modes.”

A fourth and final trend is that the back and front office boundaries are blurring. “The customer journeys start and end online. Customers want to do things themselves instead of contacting a customer service centre. There is a strong user experience focus and mobile devices come first.”

Interestingly though, Mr Bauwens believes the almighty smartphone will eventually disappear as AI, mixed reality and other interfaces take their place.

In conclusion, to embrace the future you need hybrid IT systems that cover the full spectrum of contracted vehicle usage, bridge the latter with driver centric value added mobility and connected car services, and orchestrate / aggregate a broader supply chain of multi-modal mobility.

 

Authored by: Dieter Quartier