“ Design and strategy project for TomTom ”
TomTom, as one of the leading companies in the portable navigation device (PND) market, has to face the competition of free navigation software from competitors like Nokia and Google. The purpose of this project, in collaboration with TomTom, was to create a strategy for TomTom to meet this competition in order to continue as a strong brand in the navigation market. With a team of six, and '4-2-0 wheels' as our main direction, we aimed at improving the functionality and experience of getting around, no matter if you are walking, going by bus, driving or want to combine different means of transport.
We have started of with creating a vision on the future of mobility. From that, together with analyzes of TomTom and the current market situation, we derived a strategy for the future of TomTom. Since this has been an extensive project with an elaborate process and outcome, the explanation below shows a concise description of the work done.
For the analysis of TomTom's current business model, resources, capabilities and offerings and the external environment, we used several analysis methods. The main conclusion from the TomTom and market analyses is that the environment is changing towards an increased use of navigation and location based services, not only for cars. Smart phones are predicted to be the device used for this. Interviews with experts in the field of transportation and mobility confirmed these findings. For the future they also foresee that the multimodality of mobility will increase, different means of transport will be considered and combined for traveling.
Based on these insights we created a strategy where Tom-Tom offers a free software system that provides users high quality navigation and location based services. The system has three parts:
The first part is “Ask Tom”, a multimodality navigation software for smart phones. Ask Tom will offer transparent information about different means of transportation. Not only will it find you places, it will also guide you to products and services. It is meant to pull in as many customers as possible in order to gain sufficient market share.
The second part is the “TomTom it” action. It enables people to “TomTom” places they like and make people’s journeys more personal by keeping track of their preferences and history. TomTom will get to know its customers personally, which generates valuable market information.
The third part of the concept is the “Tom Me” directory. This is a plug-in directory for the consumers where they can find different location based services and applications. External parties can ask TomTom to develop and provide these plug-ins for their customers. TomTom’s platform sits between the market and the industries and will become an important customer relationship tool.
With this system, a platform of navigation and location based software, TomTom gains revenues by offering super-targeted advertisements to users, selling information about costumers streams and preferences to companies and governments. In addition they get revenues by cooperating with external parties to develop the location based plug-ins.