A Lead Team to generate cross-functional digital projects
The “Digital Lead Team” was set up in May 2022 and brings together representatives from the IT, R&D, Digital Experience and Marketing departments. It is responsible for building and driving a common roadmap for customer-focused digital products and services.
As digital technology is a strategic success factor, it was essential for Haulotte to create an interdepartmental team to improve speed and coherence.
“We were already working together, but there was nothing official in place. With the creation of the Digital Lead Team, we are defining a roadmap that will be common to all our departments,” explains Frédéric Menini, our Digital Product Manager.
Each department retains its own projects and internal organization, but the common roadmap defined by the Digital Lead Team enables us to identify digital solutions for our customers. To do this, we had to establish a process so that each department found its place, and a working method adapted to digital technology.
The Digital Lead Team has 7 members representing 4 departments:
A strategic project already under way
The “Safety KPI” project is the perfect illustration of the synergy driven by the Digital Lead Team. The goal of this project is to improve the safety of our machines thanks to digital tools, with, for example, new systems to detect and give feedback on hazards.
The Marketing department started to work on this project upstream to survey the need and identify its commercial value. The introduction of detection systems directly affects machine R&D. The information gathered must be processed by the IT department to integrate it and organize it in the Cloud, whilst the Digital Experience department is working on ways of providing feedback to the customers via the digital products (mobile app, web interface, machine screen, etc.)
Relay departments can also be mobilized. This time, it is the turn of the e-lab, the Group’s ideas incubator. “The e-Lab has come up with a feature which we have decided to include,” says Andreea Ruscea, the IT Project Manager.
The Digital Lead Team has decided to prioritize this project due to its strategic importance. For Maxime Lecler, Digital Product Owner, “it also corresponds perfectly to what Haulotte is all about, namely improving people’s safety”.
It is a major project which will last through the whole of 2023 and beyond, with the feedback of safety messages on the new machine screens which will be arriving over the next few years. “We are working on 8 new detection systems which will be deployed on several digital products,” Marine Fargetton tells us.
Currently, the “Safety KPI” project has entered phase 2. The Digital Lead Team is in the process of specifying it. This involves accurately defining the need (specifications) and writing the technical and functional specifications. “We will be hitting phase 3 in June 2023. This will be the moment when we decide who will be leading the project, who is responsible for it and how to move it forward,” says Frédéric Menini.
What process for the Digital Lead Team?
The Digital Lead Team’s missions have three phases:
Phase 1: PRIORITIZE
The Lead Team receives ideas from all the departments: Digital experience, Innovation, R&D, Marketing, E-lab, etc. It selects those which can be integrated into the Roadmap, according to the prioritization criteria it has defined, including commercial value, internal know-how, link to the Group’s global strategy, etc. If decisions need to be made by the Management, the team puts forward different implementation scenarios.
Phase 2: SPECIFY AND COST
Once the idea has been prioritized, the Lead Team specifies the project. This enables each department to establish the internal and external costs. Goal: ensure that the idea matches the Group’s capacity and plan it.
Phase 3: LEAD OR ORIENTE
The Digital Lead Team puts forward the best way to handle the project to push this idea to the market if the previous steps have been completed.
If the project mainly concerns the departments with representatives in the Digital Lead Team (IT, R&D, Digital Experience and Marketing) and it is not too large (time, budgets, number of departments involved, etc.) the team can take the project as far as the G4 stage.
If there is a shortage of resources, it offers to lead the project via other internal means (NPD process, INI, INTRA etc.)
Further reading
Our top priority: safety first!
We meet Caroline Simon, Cyrille Vial et Joël Maret-Verdant
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New BOM for the USA
Machines produced in Archbold have now their BOM and their exploded view on MyHaulotte
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Design me the aerial lift of the future!
Contest open to all Haulotte teams and their children!
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