The Reach Network works with clients to develop a better understanding of opportunities for new concepts and value propositions, based on the technology platforms in their portfolio, and to develop new service offerings to augment and enhance the consumer experience. Together with our clients, we generated insights as to how companies can better integrate their products and services into the contemporary lifestyles of consumers. Depending on the culture, different tools and methods are employed and the research process is designed with partners who are embedded in the culture of study.
A service design approach is a very useful framework that looks at the constellation of products and services on offer, analyses them individually, and how they relate to each other, to identify what is working and what are the opportunities for improvement. Reach helps clients identify with their consumers, and empathise with their routines, preferences, motivations and concerns.
Volkswagen Mobility Services
Volkswagen was interested in enhancing their customer experience, and identifying opportunities for new value propositions. The purpose of this study was to explore and inspire the development of a new service offering around paying at gas stations, based on the technology platform of an existing product.
For this project STBY worked with minds & makers. Together, they interviewed a set of German consumers to learn about their behaviours and attitudes around payments and billing with respect to products and services around cars and mobility. These interviews were analysed and transformed into easy to present personal profiles, combined with customer insights and opportunity areas.
Open Innovation for Reed Elsevier
Throughout the concept development process the perspective of users/consumers is a leading element in selecting and elaborating on ideas for potential innovations. Services can be seen as a journey or a series of critical encounters between a customer and a service provider that take place over time and across channels. Service design focuses on integrating the organisation of service elements around the user experience and combining distributed organisational resources to create an optimal service offering.
Reed Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers on the planet, engaged STBY for an open innovation project, to explore new opportunities for their business based on current customer practices. Working across multiple countries (UK and Netherlands), we focused on lead users who we identified through a process of snowballing.
We conducted fieldwork and followed-up with meetings for the identification of opportunities (insight creation) and a co-creation workshop (idea generation). The results have been used to inform the vision and strategy for a new portfolio of services targeting a specific market segment. The concepts that came out of the workshops are currently being prototyped.
