Booz Allen Hamilton recently published its views on the increasing battle for the dashboard in the connected car. I had the opportunity to learn more about the company and its work in this space. As more and more industry players traditionally known for expertise in IT and telecommunications continue to flood this service, it wasn’t surprising to encounter another firm I didn’t initially expect to be here. And what I learned is that it has actually been here for quite a while in the areas of data analytics, cybersecurity and telematics.
Having recently released “Getting the Customer Experience Right: Auto Industry Priorities for 2015,” Booz Allen Hamilton has identified six priorities for the industry to succeed in this area this year. Customer experience is a term you hear on a regular basis across service industries. As the connected car moves toward a mobility service instead of a one-off purchase; customer experience must also be a topic. As a result, priorities are changing.
The six areas identified by Booz Allen Hamilton for prioritization in 2015 are as follows:
- Time to market – In today’s OEM terms, fast is used to introduce a new feature over the course of a few years. Unless you are Tesla. Today’s design life cycle can take over five years, but the customer expectation for a connected service is months. This has to change to align better with other technologies.
- Differentiate with partnerships – The competition is tough. With Google and Apple vying to own the dashboard experience, OEMs are up against competitors they’ve never faced before. In order to capture customers’ attention and innovate with new services, OEMs will need to leverage partnerships to move into areas they currently don’t have the skill set or functionality to offer on their own.
- Secure connectivity to reinforce trust of customers – Vehicle reliability and safety have always been primary priorities for OEMs and expectations from customers. In today’s connected car, cybersecurity now enters the discussion.
- Provide a “so what” for the connected car – Everyone hears about it, not everyone understands it. Some consumers want it and some aren’t sure. But monetizing the connected car still requires some work. What will the customer spend money on for the connected car?
- Personalization of the customer experience – Context is king. Consumers are used to having personalized offers and services based on the use of their data. As in-vehicle data becomes more widely analyzed this will also need to happen in the connected car.
- Alternatives to fuel vehicles.
The “Connected Vehicle Moment” also was recently published, building on these same topics but going a little deeper into how OEMs should consider moving forward in this changing environment. As cars have become part of our “personal ecosystem,” the expectations for connectivity, convenience and entertainment have also changed. Increasing the level of intelligence going forward in the connected car will be key to succeeding in this area.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
