After organizing a kick-off with the clients, I immediately translated the assignment into a debriefing, in order to avoid misunderstandings.
In order to communicate interim findings and questions to the client, I came up with a fixed way of presenting the findings and made a template for the PowerPoints.
Furthermore, I did some exploratory research on what psychological ownership exactly entails. According to our intermediary (who is in contact with the client) it is very important to focus on this.
After sprint 1 I immediately started doing best practices research, here I looked at other companies that currently already offer a product-as-a-service. I looked at companies that also happened to be currently renting out tools, such as Boels and Hilti.
What struck me was that both companies also rented out their stuff to individuals, which is probably not going to be possible with Holmatro because of their specialized equipment. I also found out that both companies have an app in use and that they offer different rental options. The apps show all sorts of things, such as invoices and instructions.
As a team, we then organized a brainstorming session (crazy 8 brainstorming), from which we came up with the following ideas:
- 'Tom the tool expert': (giving instructions through stickers on how to maintain tools, machines, etc.).
- 'Washing line': a step-by-step plan that you go through. Step 1 is to take the tool (and use it), after using it you go to step 2: cleaning etc.
- 'Pimp your tool': offer the possibility to personalize tools by buying accessories (eg other handles, etc.)
We have put our focus on coming up with ideas that will allow materials to be better maintained, which will make them last longer.
In the end, we chose to continue both the idea of "Tom the tool expert" in combination with an app. I created an assumption based experience map based on the app, it can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Assumption based experience map.
We had already thought about the functions of the app and these also came from interviews that were conducted. It wasn't entirely clear what the 'Tom' idea was going to look like, so everyone made their own prototype of this idea. The prototype I made is shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: Prototype 'Tom the tool expert'.
It was difficult to find people who were open to being interviewed. Until now we had spoken to men who worked in construction, but they were not quite part of our target group. It was up to me to get people who would help us.
I then decided to reduce the target group to 'people working in the railroad industry' and phoned ProRail. They referred me to AssetRail, VolkerRail, BAM and Strukton; three of these companies were happy to talk to us. I was also able to arrange an interview with someone from Holmatro itself. From the interviews with these companies I made the following findings:
- When lending out tools, the companies often do not get their tools back complete or the tools are defective.
- Companies that borrow the tools do not have to maintain the tools, the rental companies do that.
- The companies in question are almost all concerned with sustainability.
- Holmatro tools are very good quality, but they come with a somewhat more expensive price tag.
- Track work often happens in 52 or 56 hours, from Friday evening to Monday morning, so that public transport can resume as soon as possible. If tools don't function properly these works stagnate.
- Everyone wants to be able to use tools for as long as possible, so it is very important that employees can see how to maintain their tools themselves, the Tom stickers seem to be ideal for the companies.
- There is hardly any interest in the app.
- Companies would like to see more types of rental options, because sometimes they need a certain tool for six months and sometimes only for a day.
- Renting 'small tools' is superfluous, employees often already have these themselves.
- Holmatro thinks it is a good idea to provide digital instruction videos with the equipment.
- The image of Holmatro fits well with the 'Tom stickers'.
Based on these interviews, we chose to keep the "Tom stickers" but come up with something extra. I then came up with the idea of offering different rental options as an extra. These rental options differ in: the time of borrowing, the amount of service and the excess. We have also added a QR code to the 'Tom stickers', where instructional videos about the tool will be found.
This idea was split into HOLMrent and HOLMlease. The more service and the less deductible the more expensive the price. We have made sure that the middle option is the most attractive, so people are less likely to choose the cheapest option. HOLMrent offers these options for a short renting period and HOLMlease offers these options for a longer renting period.
