Continental AG is one of the world’s top five automotive suppliers. The company develops intelligent technologies for the transport of people and goods for B2B and B2C customers. Today, it employs over 212,000 people in 55 countries and, in 2015, generated sales of €39.2 billion. Its Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Business Unit connects wireless communication technologies with the Internet of Things to create intelligent transport solutions, tackling challenges such as Mega-Cities.

Client Business Challenges

Continental ITS had a flash of insight. While its core business had long centered on selling vehicle parts to OEMs and garages, the company began to think more strategically about the larger possibilities of one of its services, namely, the data analysis it sent to the vehicles of its drivers’ onboard units. If ITS could enhance this service, perhaps it could transform the customer experience. If it could do that, its leadership mused, Continental might move beyond selling components to third parties to establishing a direct relationship with end consumers.

Attention turned to electronic horizon (eHorizon), a dynamic mapping system that enables vehicles to ‘see’ around corners. What if Continental could harness this technology for a richer customer experience? The leadership team immediately understood it had to figure out the right digital services for its customers, and build the right business model and value network to achieve its ambitions.

Continental ITS and BearingPoint worked jointly to identify digital services specifically for motorcyclists, and lay the foundation for an entirely new, high-growth business model.

BearingPoint’s Contribution

This project hinged on fruitful collaboration and bold, innovative thinking. How exactly, though, was Continental ITS’s vision achieved?

Diving headfirst into research, our starting point was Continental’s customers: we used leading solution-based techniques to precisely formulate the services that motorcyclists desired. But that was just the beginning.

With an abundance of customer input, the BearingPoint Digital Innovation Generator was critical to pinpointing the most relevant digital services for motorcyclists. BearingPoint’s brilliant tool provided the instruction manual to assess the business resources, budgets, and KPIs for the project, leading to the definition of the new digital services offering.
 

BearingPoint’s Digital Innovation Generator considers all relevant facets of a service offering. In this way we were able to reduce learning curves and use a structured framework to convince all participants of our approach.

Rene Körner, Senior Manager Strategy & Business Development, Continental AG

 

Client Business Outcomes

Hailed as laying the groundwork for a robust and high-growth business model, the project demonstrated how an already successful business can adopt platform technologies with innovative business models in a pragmatic way.

The team succeeded in:

  • Developing new value propositions for both existing customers and new customers by launching eHorizon
  • Crystallizing the business concept eHorizon for motorcycles, and casting Continental ITS as the end-to-end service provider
  • Creating a sophisticated digital service offering, forming the basis of a broader digital ecosystem
  • Positioning the digital ecosystem to enable the business to participate in such areas as ‘smart cities’
  • Presenting Continental ITS as an ‘orchestrator’ in smart mobility, by combining hardware and software

The project has equipped the business with the mindset and the technical know-how to quickly identify and capture business opportunities in the future for exceptional market share growth.

  • Digital Service Offering for Connected Bikers 195.46 KB Download

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