Manufacturing Success Story

Working with the general manager, product manager, and software engineering manager for renewable energy products company, developed market development model and data monetization model for new Energy Management Platform. Project efforts began with learning about the Energy Management Platform and its functionality and manufacturing process. 

The client management team wanted to identify new IoT oriented product markets for their EMP (Energy Management Platform).  Efforts were directed at interviewing prospects from a variety of industries identifying and defining target markets and prospective customers. These discussions lead to identification of two important application markets. 

We recommended that the EMP should be re-positioned as a component system or part of component system, in order to address several electronic–mechanical related applications for commercial or consumer products.  One of the opportunities for an EMP was positioning the platform as a component system for a solar panel industry. The EMP would be utilized to manage, monitor, and collect data on energy flow and energy storage for future customer needs. We recommended to management the need to focus on the solar panel and property management industries and developing monetization model for managing and storing energy. Solar Panel and Property Management sectors represent growth industries for customers seeking new significant energy savings using EMPs. 

We then designed value chain model for the target market. Value Chain model was designed to illustrate customer digital connectivity options to downstream customers. The value chain also modeled distributors, installers, and their customer markets.

Related opportunities also included addressing complex energy grid needs requiring significant technology infrastructure integration.  Additionally, we recommended our client focus on helping customers manage energy flow levels and energy availability in the property management sector.  One the application values of the EMP solar power panel is it required less maintenance and would send alerts to management regarding solar panel performance issues. 

The EMP business model helped the General Manager and his leadership team identify a new target market and data monetization model for creating new revenue streams for their Energy Management Platform. 

Most industry respondents agree that the primary objective of their data-and-analytics activities is to generate new revenue. We asked about data monetization as one such way to create revenue, and the results suggest that these efforts are fairly new. Of the 41 percent of respondents whose companies have begun to monetize data, a majority say they began doing so just in the past two years. McKinsey December 2017