Apply Platform Strategies to a Non-Platform Industry

Digital Transformation: Platform Strategies for Success

Background : As per Morgan Chase, overall EV sales – including Battery Electrice Vehicle(BEV), Plug in Hybrid electric vehile(PHEVs) – are estimated to account for over 32% of total vehicle sales in 2025. The global electric vehicle sales in 2017 reached 1.19 million units and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 32.57% to reach 10.79 million units by 2025 as per research firm markets and markets.

Improving charging infrastructure, increasing vehicle range, and reducing cost of batteries  are the key levers to fuel the growth. As the adoption and use of electric vehicles grows, charging infrastructure needs to catch up. For example China is one of the rapidly growing market target 4.5 million units of charging posts and 12,000 units of charging stations by 2020. At the end of 2017, just under 600,000 public charging points were installed globally, with 320,000 of these in China according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Opportunity: In major markets like USA, China and Europe, building a vast network of charging station is very challenging considering the width and breadth of these regions. The are various investments are happening in this space in silos funded by the government, financial institutions, and automobile manufactures like Tesla. These market trends/forecasts and the dearth of charging station availability is opening an opportunity to build a platform to build a global network of charging stations.

Scope: Develop a platform for building the charging stations globally for all types of electric vehicle. The platform will promote to bring existing charging stations to the platform and to establishing new charging stations at a global scale.

Benefits: The main benefit for the platform development company are higher market control and exponential revenue growth as the market grow. The benefit to end customers are mainly the higher availability of charging stations and unified fees.  The benefits for automotive  manufacture are increased electric vehicle sales. The benefits for the charging station owners are assured business, optimum facility utilisation and customer reach

Measurements for success: The key Success factors are

• Number of charging stations onboarded
• Number of registered vehicles/Consumers
• No of Car Manufacturers with integrations

Revenue growth from direct and value added services

Describe the business, business unit, or brand that you have chosen.

Deployment and Operation of Electric Vehicle Charging platform for the  Automotive industry  is the business we have chosen.  Here after the company will be known as “The Charging Platform Company” in the rest of the assignment. Refer business description to understand the business case, solutions and benefits.

Customers

Who are your key customer segments and what is the value proposition for each segment?

Objectives

What objectives are you aiming to achieve by applying platform strategies?

Enable Rapid proliferation of Electric Vehicles by:

1. Creating a common charging infrastructure for all Electric vehicle manufacturers
2. Making it easy for Electric Vehicle owners to locate and use charging infrastructure
3. Enabling higher utilization & faster earn backs for charging infrastructure owners
4. Provide higher value for customers and increase monetization potential by offering Value added services
5. Incentivize Charging station providers with innovative financing options, infra equipment discounts & utilization commitments

Design Strategy

Describe your platform design and optimization technique. How will you increase network effects?

• Definition of the Value Unit : Charging facility for electric vehicles
• Design of Interaction around the value Unit
  • Creation – Onboarding of charging station providers & Customers
  • Curation – Changing station availability by location (Location based filtering)
  • Consumption – scheduling, booking of the facilities and make Payments

  • Value Added Services - Offer, discounts , premium subscriptions, Financing, Equipment lease etc.

Platform Design to Enable the Interaction

• Architecture , Network , Tools and Data
  • Smartphone application – Locate, Track availability, Scheduling, Payments & Value added Services
  • API’s for car manufacturers & GPS Providers to integrate and serve this using in-dash application
  • API’s to enable personalized ads and real time marketing
  • Charging infra provider app to manage the operations – track availability, Pricing, scheduling, billing, Geo tagging etc.
  • Social features – Ratings, Reviews, Recommendations, Sharing etc.
  • Simplified Sign up process to on-boarding different customer segment

  • Usage, Spend Analytics & Insights

Designing a Minimum Viable Platform :  Powering One Interaction at a time

Monetization Strategy

Launch Strategy

• Best suited launch strategy for EVCP (Electric Vehicle Charging Platform) is Micro Market strategy.
• Overall approach would be to kick start platform within specific geographical location (pilot launch) by consolidating infrastructure providers – charging station and then follow it up with customer(EV owners) on-boarding.
• Once we get a critical mass of customers we will on-board both OEM manufactures and value added services providers.
• We will run this as a pilot in one city to validate/tweak the concept and business model. Subsequently more cities will be added on the platform. The same onboarding sequence – Charging stations, Customers, Value added services providers will be repeated for each city/state/country

Governance

Set up the ground rules and clearly define:

• Key participants and their responsibilities
• Charging and revenue sharing mechanism
• Effective and low cost Conflict resolution mechanism

Review & incorporate Key stakeholder inputs in rules

Setup Regulatory Mechanisms

• Setup appropriate metrics & monitoring mechanisms to track fair usage, Pricing, etc
• Act as a enforcer to ensure that the platform policies are followed by all stakeholders
• Setup and publish a well defined graduated punitive framework for rule violators

Network Effects

The Network effects that we will leverage to grow the platform will include a Producer First strategy

How will you ensure that the platform’s success is sustained?

• Ensure Quality of Service & Customer Experience
  • Adequate Infra availability,
  • Short wait times
  • Avoid spamming with irrelevant ads
  • Simplified & Seamless transaction experience

  • Having an effective Customer feedback & concern redressal mechanism

• Ensure Customer Engagement
  • Expand portfolio of value added services to improve engagement and maximize customer value
  • Leverage data to provide usage and spend insights

  • Devise a Loyalty program to increase stickiness

• Create Entry Barriers & increase platform value through open innovation
  • Through Network efforts by onboarding more charging infra providers and customers
  • API integration with OEM and other third party providers

  • Open the platform to developers to build new value added services