MAINTENANCE & REPAIR MOBILE APP

Learning Launch Tool

Challenge    One of the Stockholders of the company I work for, in which I develop the role of Head of  Operations, is determined to develop a New System based on Mobile and Web Apps. This System  will allow users to access to different kind of services for home maintenance, such us plumbing,  carpentry, electricity checking, etc. As in my country, currently, this kind of services are just  offered by recommendation, there are many issues to solve, but first it is important to determine  if this kind of service (through Technology) will effectively meet the offer and the demand  replacing the current way of doing it. My team has advised the Board to develop a MVP and  experiment before engaging in a bigger and more expensive project.    Selection    Our advice has been adopted by the Board of Directors, and therefore we have determined that  we will follow the Design Thinking Path and implement a Minimum Value Product based on the  main functionality the app should have, we expect to get the most important information from  the Learning Launch phase, this is a tool that will help the Directors to make a decision about a  larger investment.    Application    For the MVP we didn´t invest in building a hole product, we looked for similar Open Source  platforms, some of them had issues when many users where connected at the same time, but  that wasn´t a concern for the MVP. We integrated some Maps and Geolocation APIs in order to  be able to complete the main process of request, and we included some forms for Credit Card  Payment, but we didn’t integrate the whole Payment Ecosystem.  When we finished the App for the Learning Launch, we delivered it to the Business Development  Department. The distribution of this App was limited, and it was delivered through a mailing  campaign, we needed to measure: Number of Downloads, Number of Registrations, Time of  Navigation inside the app, Leads made.    Insight and Approach    The mailing campaign gave us some important feedback that we decided to include for a Version  2.0 of the MVP. Consumers preferred:

1. The Service should be guaranteed by a formal company, the technology to just publish

services was not enough.

2.  People were likely to pay higher prices if the services were provided by a Company and

not directly by workers. This was mainly related to security.

3. People wanted to read reviews before hiring the service.

The learning launch gave the Company the most important lesson, that in order to reach the  market, the Company needed an Operations Partnership, because the technology was not all for  making this idea grow.

