Marketplace Build

Why you might find this interesting:

I have included this as a case study because it is a great example of what can be achieved by great people aligned behind a Vision they can believe in and are given the freedom to “invent”. My role was “simply” to try and maintain a safe environment for them to work their magic within. What we delivered was transformational for hundreds of suppliers who would not be able to compete against bigger brands without Marketplace.

  • Product development
  • B2B data integrations
  • Being truly Agile
  • The power of people
  • Transforming an idea into a £ multi-million value add

The Company

Rentalcars.com is the Transport Business Unit of Booking.com. Rentalcars.com is the world’s largest online car hire broker. Rentalcars.com work with the world’s best known car hire brands.

Based Manchester. 2000 staff. Part of Booking.com group. Serving customers in 160 countries

As a broker, Rentalcars.com connects customers with suppliers and, in simplest terms, earns a commission for making that connection.

The Engagement Summary

Challenge

Make it easier for many thousands of car hire suppliers to offer their services to Booking.com customers

Response

Create a self-service platform that allows suppliers to onboard and maintain their fleet, prices and Ts & Cs

Outcome

The delivery of a scaleable platform and supplier support mechanism. Investment (CAPEX and OPEX) was repaid by month 16 after go live. 1000 new suppliers added.

The Detail

Where we started

Situation before we began

Rentalcars.com over its first 10 years had connected suppliers by bespoke integrations with all best known car hire brands. This allowed access to approx 60-70% of worldwide fleet across some 500 or so large fleet “suppliers”. However, Rentalcars.com was not able to engage the remaining 35k car hire businesses and gain access to that fleet.

The specific challenges associated with engaging this supply base:

Tech challenges
  • Little commonality in systems used across this “long tail” of suppliers
  • Low confidence that supplier systems could cope with the massive processing demands that are required when working with brokers
Commercial challenges
  • Margin yield per supplier likely to be low
  • Potential suppliers were anti- or ambivalent towards brokers
  • Engaging difficult-to-identify suppliers, at low cost, in order to let them know they were welcome
Skills challenge
  • No SaaS experience in the business
  • Little free capacity to embark upon a multi-quarter green field development

The delivery phases

Phase 1 :: Securing the Investment & Discovery

Duration

6 months

Q4 15 & Q1 16

Outcomes

  • A Vision that all were agreed upon
  • A Business Case that was agreed as “pessimistic” yet still attractive
  • Experience-based Time & Cost estimations, validated by potential builders
  • A Functional Spec, Data Requirements & Application Wireframes as the output of 3 month “Discovery Project” against which an RFP process could be run

The Players

  • Data architect
  • Stakeholder group (CEO, CFO, CTO, CCO)
  • Wyoming Interactive

Lessons Learned

The biggest challenge was in selling the original good idea back to the Sponsors.

Success lay in market research, a data-based approach plus the “comfort of detail”

For me, the most valuable tools at my disposal were trusty old Powerpoint and Excel plus superb dedication by Wyoming-Interactive

Phase 2 :: Forming a Team

Duration

6 months

Q2 16

Outcomes

  • Appointment of a “Build Team” from Godel Technologies following an competitive tendering process
  • Allocation of an internal team to build a Gateway between the future Marketplace application and several internal systems
  • The recruitment and appointment of a Programme Manager (later Product Owner) to orchestrate delivery
  • The appointment of a UX Lead who immediately started mocking up screens for a finessed Supplier UX

The Players

  • Stakeholder group (CEO, CFO, CCO, CTO)
  • Data architects
  • Fabulous contenders through ITT process
  • Chris Kenny (PO). Brent Starling (UXD).

Lessons Learned

When dealing with contenders in an ITT, investing heavily in making sure they are able to present themselves to their max potential is good for everyone

From the ITT decision, I observed that the quality of the decision is less important than how those taking that consider more important how their decision will be perceived by those further up the ladder

Always appoint people who are smarter than yourself

Phase 3 :: The Build

Duration

6 months

Q3 16 – Q3 17

Outcomes

  • Minimum Viable Product (MVP) tested for feedback with real users in Q2 16
  • Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) launch ready by end of Q3 16
  • MMP comprised 2 portals (one External-facing, the other Internal-facing) plus a Gateway layer.
  • Core features for Suppliers (primary users) were the ability to onboard themselves with fleet, prices and Ts&Cs plus the ability to keep these up to date when live. A critical function was the ability to ensure Suppliers were paid quickly, accurately and automatically in a tax compliant manner
  • 10 Suppliers recruited in order to go live with MMP
  • Zendesk integrated in order to allow support of mass users with a relatively tiny support team

The Players

  • Product Owner, UX Lead
  • For “Integrate It” workstream: Internal delivery team of 4 BE Devs and QA on the Gateway “Gateway” workstream
  • For “Build It” workstream: a Godel Technologies team comprising Project Manager, BA, Tech Lead plus 20 FE & BE Devs plus Test / QA
  • For “Sell It” workstream: a team of 4 from Wyoming-Interactive with mix marketing skills

Lessons Learned

… on People

It’s all about People.

Building great applications is easy with smart, self motivated people, united by a common cause.

Get that right and cultural differences are overcome, the technology takes care of itself and obstacles are swept aside.

… on Data and Process

In large companies, so few (possibly only an handful) understand how the data flows in order to let the company and its partners work.

… on Methodology

When creating something new, investing heavy effort in getting a team to work in a truly Agile way is priceless.

But it’s hard work especially when factors such as company culture, national culture and even contract styles conspire against the The Team (and Product).

Phase 4 :: The Launch

Duration

3 months

Q4 17

Outcomes

  • Recruitment of Suppliers in UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Cyprus in order to increase location offering to customers
  • Completion of supplier payment features, using Virtual Credit Cards
  • Localisation of all features to allow support of Suppliers in GBP / English and EUR / English language & currency combination territories
  • The traditional method of onboarding a new Supplier which had taken on average 3 months was reduced to being possible within 1 hour and 45 minutes

The Players

  • Product Owner, UX Lead
  • “Integrate It” workstream continued under Bhav with focus on Supplier payments.
  • “Build It” continued on features that we compromised out of MMP
  • “Sell It” workstream ramped up recruitment effort. The dream team of Sonny & Imran were in the spotlight on recruitment with Tierney on supplier support

Lessons Learned

When taking a new Product to market, it’s worth considering that for every £ you invest in development, you’ll need an equivalent £ for marketing.

And…

Always check the spelling of marketing collateral before it gets printed!

Launching a MVP (or, as we did, a MMP), is not the crossing of a “Finish Line”.

The launch is the Start Line.

Companies (and especially the Product and/or Tech domains) tend to see this moment as the time when “resource” (people) can be deployed elsewhere while the burden of effort is flipped to sales or commercial arms of the business.

Be careful what is compromised out of MVP or MMP because, once live, your ability to “catch up” is always lower than you might imagine.

Phase 5 :: The Roll Out

Duration

1 year

2018

Outcomes

  • Localisations for a further 30 countries including translation to 8 languages
  • Feature release as the team developed its way through the Backlog
  • 200 Suppliers live by end of year, all supported by same small Support Team
  • Monthly Break Even (positive ROI) was achieved mid-year which marked the start of repaying overall investment costs

The Players

  • Product Owner
  • “Integrate It” & “Build It” merged into a single reduced Marketplace Product Team having conducted Knowledge Transfer from Godel. Twice during the year, the team “pivotted” out onto other tasks, suffering the drag inherent in “context switching”

Lessons Learned

Bringing automation to previously manual processes shines an uncomfortable spotlight on workaround, re-work and errors. With teams of people engaged in supporting this re-work, it is a real challenge to encourage the change in order to address the underlying problem.

“Pivoting” should be occassional and by exception.

Investment costs are often forgotten in large organisations – even by those involved in committing to the expense.

We all have a responsibility to Shareholders to make best use of their investment.

Marketplace in “Business As Usual” state

The Roll Out continued & Suppliers benefited

Throughout 2020, Marketplace was localised to reach more than 70 countries by end of year. By then 500 Suppliers were live. Prior to Marketplace, none of these would have been able to compete in the same stage as “traditional” large rental companies.

Customers benefited

A greater variety of pick up locations were offered to Customers – traditional locations at airports or train station are not convenient for all customers.

More accurate vehicle descriptions.

Customer-friendly Ts&Cs.

These factors plus the tendency for Marketplace suppliers to provide more boutique services, combined to ensure a better customer experience.

This was reflected in NPS and Customer Satisfaction level scores which demonstrated, on average, a 30% better level of service from Marketplace suppliers to Rentalcars.com customers.

Rentalcars.com benefited

All investment costs were recovered by month 16 after launch. Monthly ROI (comparing margin against team costs + overheads) averaged x2 in Year 2 and x3 in Year 3. During the peak month of July for those years, ROI reached x10.

Marketplace created the model for managing mass users and suppliers by a few support personnel plus massive automation.

Credits

Thank you to all of the following who made an important contribution to bringing Marketplace to life.

Do get in touch if you would like your initials replaced by your name and a link to your LinkedIn profile, personal website or company website.

Product Management

Chris Kenny, TV, Kira Navitskaya, Brent Starling, Bhavinkumar Patel, TC, ML, IW

Front End Design & Dev

ZG, LS, AS, YT, KK,

Back End Dev

Vladislav Sidlyarevich, CG, VS2, JC, SSM, AD, AV, SK, AR

Architects

AF, DL, Alexander Nozdryn-Platnitski, MS

Test & QA

LS, DD, SHW, AP, UK, TD

Commercial

IZ, Andy Tierney, JM, ADSV

Sales & Marketing

SH, CC

Disco Support

CMcA, JB, NP, RI

Finance

AT, EG, TT,

Godel Leadership

NT, EP, ND, AK

The sponsors that kept the faith

IB, JA, MS, GB