New opportunities for mature products
Fan coil units – mature products with very limited functional improvements in recent years. All producers on the market offer similar products with minimal differences. So when DencoHappel, the leading technology innovators in the air treatment field, approached us to help them develop a new line of these products we accepted the challenge.
Innovating for multiple markets
The goal was for the product to meet the needs of customers from various markets – in terms of industries but also geographically. We thus put together a team of people from 8 different countries and started with a market selection. For the selected markets we defined the customer needs and tailored the initial ideas to the needs that appeared to be unmet. This produced a handful of concepts that we then submitted to competition analysis and market potential evaluation and formulated a differentiation strategy for them.
Innovation is not always just in design
Products that succeeded in the initial phase were moved forward to prototyping. Conducting all these steps prior to designing the prototype, allows us to significantly improve the success rates of the future products. Done this way it can exceed 80% – a stark improvement from today’s 70-90% failure rate.
The project was a success. It brought internationally validated concepts for design improvements of the units. However, innovation is not always just in design. As a result of this project, we proposed changes to sales process and completely reimagined the lifecycle tracking of old units.
About DencoHappel (now FläktGroup)
DencoHappel, now FläktGroup, is the European market leader for energy efficient indoor air technology solutions. With representation in 65 countries around the world, they operate in residential, commercial, industrial as well as special applications segments.
2023 Direct People
Created by Beneš & Michl
