Helping Client Navigate the North American Market for Industrial Autonomous Vehicles
Challenge
Client’s teams had attempted to beta-test and evaluate use cases for autonomous vehicles and heavy equipment in a broad array of industrial environments, but, due to language and cultural barriers, they lacked concrete, actionable insights to successfully penetrate the North American market.
The GLG Approach
GLG Engagement team set out to evaluate the current business ecosystem, including major supply chain players, understand unmet customer needs and key purchasing criteria with the goal of assisting the client by highlighting pricing structure of similar heavy equipment and autonomous robots — all in the context of the U.S. construction industry.
Over several months, the engagement team applied diverse research methodologies to gather the necessary insights. They conducted 30 interviews with a wide range of key opinion leaders, designed and fielded a targeted online survey to 120 B2B customers, and held eight interactive workshops with the dedicated project team and client stakeholders.
Client worked with a team of three GLG independent experts: highly experienced B2B market researchers with more than 20-years track record of multi-industry consulting engagements, and former director of a leading autonomous mobile robotics (AMR) provider.
Outcome
The final 125-pages report integrated not only qualitative review of the industry landscape, but also a data-driven assessment of quantitative metrics, including a detailed Van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) analysis.
GLG combined the strengths of a global network and research methodologies (calls, surveys, custom recruitment) into a single Integrated Insights project to uncover deep, unbiased insight for the client’s future business planning exercise.
360⁰ View of a Niche, Evolving Industry
The dynamic nature of the industry meant that the Japanese client couldn’t rely on traditional management consultancies, and instead opted for a primary-research-focused engagement that included a capable team of subject matter experts, leveraging first–party data, without repackaging stale information from secondary sources.
Quantitative Voice of Customer Analysis
GLG Surveys team administered the B2B customer survey using a proprietary technology platform and panel of highly curated experts in the North American construction industry to ensure the data integrity of the online research.
Series of Interactive Workshops
As the subject matter involved technical details and explanations, GLG arranged multiple workshops for the senior client stakeholders (Chief Engineer, COO), which enabled brainstorming-style, free-flowing conversations.
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Hilary Malone PhD, has over 25 years of experience in global drug development, regulatory &government affairs, manufacturing and commercialization within the biopharma industry. Hilary hassignificant board level and executive committee experience including large scale organizationalrestructuring/transformation/integration, major M&A, biotech start-up, capital raising, investorrelations and pre-IPO.
Hilary is currently CEO of Stylus Medicine, a private genetic medicine biotech company. Previously sheserved as CEO of a Series-A neuroscience company. Prior to these roles, Hilary served as COO & EVP atValo Health Inc., Chief Regulatory Officer & SVP at Sanofi Inc., and Chief Regulatory Officer & SVP atPfizer and Wyeth. Previous experience also includes senior regulatory and drug development roles atReata Pharmaceuticals Inc., AstraZeneca plc and GlaxoSmithKline plc.
Hilary also serves on the Board of Directors of Hansa Biopharma and Adthera Bio. Hilary holds a PhD inMolecular Neuropharmacology and a BSc in Physiology.
Dr. Thomas Lönngren is Director at his own company PharmaExec Consulting AB. He is the Chairman of the Board of directors at Egetis Therapeutics AB, Sweden. Dr Lönngren also serves as board member at Compass Pathways PLC, London UK and NDA Group, Sweden. He acts as advisor to the following companies and organizations: NDA group, Sweden, Sweden, Artis Venture, San Francisco, US, Fujimoto Japan, Skin2Neuron Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia, US, Special advisor to the Centre for Innovation in Regulatory Science (CIRS), London UK. From 2001 until2011, Mr.Lönngren served as the Executive Director of the European Medical Agency. He was previously Deputy General Director of the Swedish Medical Product Agency until 2000. He has a degree in pharmacy and MSc in Social and Regulatory Pharmacy from Uppsala University. He is also an Honorary Member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Great Britain, Honorary Doctorate from the University of Uppsala, Honorary Doctorate from University of Bath, UK.
Marie-Anne has built a portfolio of senior advisory and non-executive roles, following a successful international career in the FMCG and Luxury sectors. She is a non-executive director of Haleon, a FTSE100 company listed in 2022 after the demerger from GSK. She is also chairwoman of Haleon Environment and Societal Sustainability committee. She is the executive director of the Pierre Fabre Group where she also sits on the Strategic Committee, and she is a Board Member of The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, one of the world’s most prestigious chamber orchestras. She is also an angel investor and focuses her time and investments on start-ups with the strongest purpose and impact.
Marie-Anne is also a regular lecturer at HEC Paris on purposeful leadership, and she has created a serious game called “Planet Purpose” to upskill people on sustainability and purpose. Throughout her 35year executive career she delivered a strong track-record of business performance and growth in brands and portfolio in both developed and emerging economies.
As a senior leader with Unilever, she led a number of different personal care categories across France, Spain and the USA – including managing the Dove brand worldwide and culminating in leading Unilever’s global Oral Care division. She also worked for LVMH as Brand General Manager of Dior Perfumes and Cosmetics worldwide. Marie-Anne was also Vice-President of Imagine for Margo – Children with Cancer for ten years, a charity she helped found in 2011 with the goal of eradicating children’s cancer. The charity is the #1 charity focused on child cancer in France and has fundraised more than €14m since its creation. Marie-Anne is a graduate from HEC Paris. She is married and has two children aged 29 and 26.
Patrick Jephson is a consultant, journalist, broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author, based in Washington D.C. He is a published authority on corporate and personal branding and crisis communications, addressing conferences worldwide as well as events at the U.S. State Department, the American University and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
With more than twenty-five years’ experience in the government, luxury and family office sectors, Patrick’s portfolio has included globally admired brands as well as national agencies and NGOs. He has also worked on reputation and legacy briefs with European, Middle Eastern and Asian families, including royalty. He now writes, presents, and advises on factual and drama TV programs, appearing on every major American and many international networks. He was recently an expert consultant to the award-winning Netflix series The Crown and provided live commentary on the Coronation of King Charles.
Patrick owes much of his practical communications and protocol experience to Princess Diana, who chose him to be her equerry and only private secretary/chief of staff. He served the Princess for eight years, responsible for all aspects of her public life, global humanitarian initiatives, and private organization. Having worked for an internationally high-profile woman (and as the father of two professionally successful daughters) he feels a special affinity for cross-cultural, gender and perception issues.
Patrick was born and raised in Ireland and holds a master’s degree in political science from Cambridge University. As an officer in the British Royal Navy, he served all over the world before being selected for royal duty. He is a citizen of the U.K., U.S.A., Ireland, and Canada.