Innovation and digitisation review
Our Group vision is to improve people's lives by envisioning, innovating and creating new avenues of access to leading edge mobility solutions.
Kerry Cassel
CEO – Mobility Solutions &
Head: Innovation and Technology
“The dedication of the community of innovators across Motus continues to drive conceptualisation, experimentation and collaborative execution that will enable Motus to excel in the present while simultaneously building for the future. I continue to be grateful and amazed by the passion and engagement of our people and I look forward to developing solutions that enable mobility into the future.”
Shaping our future business
Innovation is a core enabler of our future. Deliberate and methodical innovation helps Motus anticipate changes and position itself strategically to benefit from shifts and trends in a transforming market.
Historically, IT (Information Technology) was viewed as a support function for businesses. Not anymore. Today, in the digitised world and the Internet of Things (IoT), technology is a business driver that is central to the relationship with customers.
We understand that the customer journey has transformed and that customers want to move between digital and in person interactions, depending on their individual requirements and preferences. Our omni-channel customer experience exemplifies the notion that - by combining our physical dealership footprint and online presence - Motus can meet its customers where they are and serve them in the way they prefer. Today, the choice is the customer's when determining how much of the vehicle-buying process should be online or in person.
This is Motus' future taking shape. As digitisation solutions become more sophisticated, we have been able to fully digitise even the most complex transactional areas of our business, such as the vehicle finance application process.
Structured innovation
Our Group vision is to improve people's lives by envisioning, innovating and creating new avenues of access to leading edge mobility solutions. The innovation strategy supports this vision. Our approach is two-fold with a dual internal and external focus. Internally, innovation is focused on leveraging existing capabilities to create efficiencies and improve customer experience. Externally, we focus on strategic innovation partnerships and investing in technology and new concepts that will allow the Group to capitalise on existing and new opportunities to create value.
Innovation is a key enabler for the longer-term sustainability of the Group and supports the progress we are making to achieve our ESG priorities. For each new innovation project, we consider the sustainability of the intended outcomes prior to implementation and embed internal practices and policies that lead to effective decision-making and legal compliance.
The innovation strategy is delivered through the innovation performance model that directs our portfolio of innovation projects across three categories of innovation:
Efficiency Innovation:Doing more with less.
Sustaining Innovation:Staying in the game – doing things better.
Transformative Innovation:Solving problems for new market segments.
Over the past few years, Motus has established a culture of deliberate innovation. We established Motus Xponential (mx) as the platform to facilitate engagement, participation, and collaboration from across the Group to solve for the under-served mobility needs of South African motorists.
All innovation challenges, sourced from the leadership teams across Motus, are launched via the mx platform. Any employee can participate in these challenges either by coming up with ideas, assisting others with their ideas, joining a team to develop an idea, or idea implementation. Today, 23 concepts are in development across the three categories of innovation in the mx portfolio.
Trendspotting
The impact of digitisation will continue to intensify, and rapidly so. Shared mobility solutions, such as ride-sharing, vehicle subscription and e-hailing are becoming more common and attractive alternatives to traditional vehicle ownership. However, South Africa is a slow adopter of these models. The relatively high probabilities of accidents and theft on local roads increase the risks and add to the cost of business for some emerging mobility solutions. Globally, the growth of these mobility solutions will depend largely on the strength of the technology platforms they are built on. User convenience and new services' response to unmet customer needs will determine their success.
Previously, a lack of data often curtailed innovation. That is no longer the case. The IoT and connected cars, in particular, create vast amounts of data. Today, the challenge is rather to store, manage and monetise the vast quantities of data that are available.
Motus is creating data use cases through re-capturing of lost sales opportunities, upselling and cross-selling, and developing usage-based products and preventative maintenance predictors and manage various asset ownership risks in more sophisticated ways. We are also collaborating with subject matter experts in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
Enabling the business
Information, innovation and mobility solutions enable Motus through four types of responses to the changing environment, namely through the expansion of networks and applications; digitisation of business processes; compilation of business insights and actionable data; and building innovation capability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated global digital adoption. This new way of working and transacting demands upgraded networks and technology solutions. Over the past two years, the throughput on Motus' network increased by 337%. Adoption of the latest network solutions enabled us to increase bandwidth to cater for this changed demand, while at the same time reducing our costs by 35%.
Cybersecurity remains a top priority. To protect Motus' digital assets, we follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology cybersecurity framework - an internationally recognised standard for protection against cybercrime.
Motus also invested significantly in new and improved applications. Over the year we adopted development and operations practices (DevOps) to plan work, collaborate on code development, and build and deploy applications resulting in improved software performance at lower investment costs. In addition, these practices aid continuous integration and delivery, eliminating many of the bottlenecks that often plague application deployments. These practices also support frequent releases of new features, fixes and updates. Importantly, our new practices streamline the development process and enhance communication and collaboration across the Group.
Two digitisation projects were undertaken in the last twelve months. Phase one deployments of both projects were undertaken by June 2022. Five significant enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects were also undertaken over the year. These upgrades have re-platformed Motus to the latest technology.
Motus also conducted experiments with two AI solutions over the year. These solutions have saved 1 000 person-hours a month in a single pilot site deployment.
Motus' Digital Journey: introducing Digital Dealer
In addition to a savvy digital customer, the South African regulatory framework has made the purchasing and finance application process for vehicles more complex than ever before, increasing the administrative burden (capturing, verifying and reporting customer data to financial authorities) and, in turn, introducing frustration for customers. Our research confirmed that customers want us to simplify the vehicle finance application process and automate mundane and repetitive paperwork.
Digital Journey – from marketing to delivery
Our research indicated that certain aspects of the vehicle purchasing process (such as the vehicle finance application process) had not been digitised and were frustrating certain customers. Motus Digital Dealer was developed to address changing customer behaviour and address this challenge.
Phase one of the project was launched on motus.cars and shortens the finance application process down to just two hours. Digital Dealer engages with all the major banks in South Africa, providing customers with the best possible chance of being approved for finance and getting the best deal.
Once finance has been approved, the customer can confidently shop for a vehicle.
Going forward
Embedding our culture of innovation and digitisation will remain a primary focus. We will continue to ensure that we can effectively measure participation levels, but also drive high levels of engagement.
We will establish an online learning portal with a focus on innovation and introduce new technology concepts and topics to our people. In addition, we will explore the viability of 'gamification' of participation.
Our IT strategy remains critical to the success of the Group, and we will continue to monitor the trends emerging in the technology landscape and the increasing use of cloud infrastructure for businesses. Assessing the impact of these trends on the future of work and our wider business environment will allow us to dynamically respond to opportunities as we seek to improve people's lives by envisioning, innovating and creating new avenues of access to leading edge mobility solutions.
We will continue to invest in technology and innovation across the automotive value chain to create solutions that meet the under-served mobility needs of our customers, as well as create transformative ideas to develop new growth opportunities in mobility.
Kerry Cassel
CEO - Mobility Solutions & Head: Innovation and Technology
26 September 2022