Le brief

Transform Cédéo by creating innovative services associated with the brand

In the first trimester of 2017, CEDEO – Saint-Gobain group – approached Possible Future to conduct an in-depth reflection on its model. Indeed, in an extremely competitive market, shaken by the arrival of new entrants – for example purely digital players – it is urgent to differentiate oneself for a highly sought-after target : the professional heating businesses (300-400 SMEs in France).

An evolution of legislation particularly challenges Cédéo: The Law of Energy Transition, which imposes individualized heating costs, in the buildings heated collectively.

In the end, Possible Future was asked this question: how to transform this constraint into opportunity, to create an innovative and relevant service for Cédéo?

The approach

Lean on the network of heating engineers to push a new type of offer

For this project, the team begins by thoroughly exploring the market, consumers, technical and legal issues.  It is during this first phase that they construct a highly detailed consumer journey of the clients (the artisans) and users (trustees, landlords), that enables them to identify all the innovation opportunities around the problem.

In the case of repartitioning the heating costs, the complexity is two-fold :

• First is to identify the correct channels of distribution, to move faster that the competitors and effectively reach the many stakeholders (owners, occupiers, trustees, condominiums, landlords, municipalities);
• Then, to achieve a consistent financial package for this service requiring significant investment.

Everything must be differentiating enough to allow Cédéo to stand out in a consolidated market among 4 major actors.

Our conviction? We must promote the national heating professionals, and put them at the heart of the service, so that they become prescribers to their own customers.

The design phase therefore brings out a service based on Cédéo’s extensive network of customers, SMEs and heating professionals, to widely distribute a heating cost allocation service, in a manner that is completely transparent to the end user. The concept allows each household with a collective heating system to keep track of their consumption and their heating expenses, hitherto indexed to the area of the home.

Once the outlines of the service have been drawn, the prototyping phase aims to concretely achieve:

• Precisely define the consumer journey, their use of different platforms (app, website, etc) ;
• Identify and consult potential partners, like the French Building Federation ;
• Develop a Minimum Valuable Product, from the point of view of a service, but also the identity of the brand and communication strategy ;
• Create commercial equipment designed for professionals;
• Recruit beta-testers, whose feedback allows the team to adjust particular elements of the concept, such as how to install and use heat cost allocators

The result

Temperly, an interoperable and eco-responsible service

The solution we imagine takes the form of a turnkey installation and operation of dispatcher devices, provided by the heating engineers to the trustees and managers. The pros are responsible for the installation and maintenance of the box containing the dispatcher, soldered on each heating device. The data is then collected and processed, and allows billing of heating costs based on the actual energy consumption per household.

Thanks to this new service, the trustees and individuals do not change the interlocutor, and the pros add a string to their bow, without additional administrative management.

The business plan, the creation of brand identity, commercial materials, documents and contracts are quickly assembled – then, taken over by the teams Cédéo, Temperly is born! And with it a service that is:

• interoperable, as it is compatible with the operation of many trustees and property managers in terms of data centralization;
• transparent, which gives all stakeholders visibility on indexes and the distribution of costs through a dedicated platform;
• eco-responsible,because individualizing heating costs is empowering the large population and inviting them to optimize its energy consumption.

En savoir plus

• Temperly's website