Ford Liive: a new connected vehicle service for commercial fleets
New vehicles with pre-installed network connectivity present an opportunity for new services. The question is, what value can this provide for light commercial fleets and their operators?
We informed a new proposition that customers valued. This work led to a new maintenance and uptime service. Ford Liive was launched in 2021 available to 80% of Ford commercial vehicle customers in Europe.
|
Challenge
|
What are the jobs that fleet operators need help with?
There are a host of possible services enabled by connecting vehicles to the Internet – from insurance to logistics. It was vital to sort the possible from the valuable. To do this we needed to understand what operational challenges fleets had and what business value could be created for them. Fleets range from a few vehicles to 10s or 100s so we also needed to define an opportunity that was relatively universal.
|
Approach
|
Deep into the day-to-day work of running a fleet
Livework conducted in-depth research with drivers and operators across the UK. This helped us to understand the range of needs they had through the operational cycle of running and maintaining their vehicles. We were able to understand which needs were well met by the market and where there were gaps.
We found that the organisation and administration of vehicle maintenance was a significant workload for operators and drivers and still relatively manual and paper based. There was an opportunity to relieve this through digital tools that drew data straight from the vehicles. Digging deeper we were able to understand the business potential of tackling the hours that vehicles were out of service.
|
Outcome
|
- Launched in 2021 across Europe the new service uses telematic data to deliver predictive diagnostics and maintenance. The Pro service supports fleets to maximise uptime of their vehicles.
- Ford Liive connected uptime system has provided 15,000 additional days of vehicle availability for fleet operators in the first 6 months
- Linked to 80% of Ford connected commercial vehicle customers in Europe by the end of 2021
“Livework gave us strong innovative ideas and proposed a de-risked Minimum Viable Product approach to take to market.”
“Livework gave us strong innovative ideas and proposed a de-risked Minimum Viable Product approach to take to market.”
- Jon Scott, Project Lead at Ford Smart Mobility
I am a founding partner of Livework having set-up the company in 2001. My focus on keeping Livework at the forefront of service design practice and ensuring we continue to create value for our clients.
Related content