Brief

Our client aims to maintain its market-leading position as a supplier of photovoltaic panel mounting solutions for residential, commercial and utility use. They recognised that, in a cost-sensitive marketplace, it was vital to have a plan for efficient and effective research and development projects.

Our client wanted a realistic and achievable roadmap for innovative technology development. So, we helped them map the full spectrum of their customers’ needs – and identify where new concepts could address them.

Approach

We designed and led a workshop-based approach to discover senior management priorities and analyse customer needs. Then we all got creative – with concept generation sessions and evaluation of a range of potential technology applications for the market.

Risks, timelines and resource requirements were evaluated for each technology project and distributed appropriately throughout the roadmap. This gave us a coherent, credible plan that encouraged innovation to reach company goals.

Benefit

Senior management buy-in was high as the team was closely involved. Priorities were clearly established prior to developing the roadmap and this allowed a smooth transition into company planning.

A structured plan for development was established and resulted in broad agreement of what staffing and financial resources would be required to accomplish it.

Having mapped the concepts against customer needs, stakeholders could be confident that a balanced development portfolio was being planned.