Nokia’s Travel & Fleet Procurement has launched several car sharing pilots with partners found on Open Ecosystem Network.
Industry disruptions can be a little tricky for B2B buyers and vendors alike. Who to send those RFPs to, if you’re not sure which companies are in the market – or even what exactly it is that you’re looking for? And what if your bright business idea is so unconventional that it doesn’t quite fit any of the existing procurement categories? If it’s still in the bud and the corporate procurement schemes just feel like an overkill?
Open Ecosystem Network can help big corporations and niche solution providers find each other. We talked with Jarno Pajunen, who is Global Category Manager at Travel & Fleet category group at Nokia’s Indirect Procurement, as well as the initiator of several successful mobility-related challenges posted on the network.
Disruptions in private mobility will take over the corporate world
Jarno, you’ve worked with travel & fleet sourcing for more than a decade. What do you think are the next big things in corporate mobility?
“Digitalisation and new business models have already had a great impact on personal mobility. Think Uber, car sharing, ride sharing… We can definitely expect these novelties to start emerging on the corporate side as well.
“Employees’ values and needs around mobility are also changing. In the past, a company car used to be a highly regarded and sought-after employee benefit. The urban millennials, however, are not so much into owning a car in the first place. They might appreciate more flexible solutions instead, like access to on-demand car services or seasonal car leases.”
Are these changes a challenge for the procurement function?
“Traditionally, procurement employs RFIs, RFPs and RFQs to explore the market and see what’s available. This works when we’re talking products, services and needs that we’re already familiar with. An experienced sourcing professional will know who the potential suppliers in his or her field are and how to reach them.
“But as entire industries change, we find ourselves working to solve problems that didn’t previously exist, or trying to find novel solutions. That’s a different game. Even if we had some idea where to start, our initial assumptions might unintentionally rule out some very promising suppliers.
“We need ways to discuss more openly with different kinds of market players, and we need to be able to work flexibly together to refine both our needs and the potential solutions.”
OPEN challenges: looking for tentative solutions to open-ended problems
You’ve used Open Ecosystem Network (OPEN) to overcome those procurement challenges. Tell us a bit about that.
“We’ve already launched a few different challenges on OPEN. One of them was Car rental 2.0, which focused on business travel and short-term car hires.
“Renting a car can be a frustrating process for the business traveller, and it isn’t very resource-efficient for the company either. We wanted to see if we could find new, user-friendly alternatives to serve our employees’ short-term car rental needs better. The field is developing fast, so instead of taking the official procurement route we wanted to test a more agile and open-ended approach.
“At this stage we were open to all kinds of solutions: end-to-end rental services as well as individual tools and interfaces, both on a local and global level. OPEN is a great platform to share these kinds of indefinite needs with potential partners.”
Did you get good proposals in response to the car rental challenge on OPEN? What kinds of potential partners did you find?
“We received many good proposals. Most of them were about different forms of car sharing, but there were also ride sharing alternatives. The proposals came from both startups and more established growth companies.
“For some other challenges we’ve also received proposals from our existing suppliers, which is very welcome as well! I know that sometimes our partners feel that the official procurement processes don’t leave enough room for throwing new ideas around, so it’s great to be able to encourage them this way.”
Piloting alternatives to car rentals and taxi rides in business travel
Did you go ahead with some of the proposed solutions?
“Yes, we decided to pilot two different solutions with two different companies.
“One of them was DriveNow, which offers an entire fleet of shared cars that can be used and parked across the city. The other one was a startup called Vedia. Their solution was to provide us with a set number of rental cars that could be reclaimed and returned at a fixed location at the Nokia Campus.
“For both solutions, our employees would use a mobile app to rent and unlock the car. Both pilots were carried out in Finland.”
What were the key findings from those pilots?
“We got a lot of useful information about what types of journeys people prefer to take with these short-term rental cars, and how the technology works.
“Rides to and from the airport and between Nokia site, university campus and Helsinki downtown were popular, whereas the rentals that would both start and end at the office didn’t attract that many users.”
Any next steps?
“Based on the pilot, we have decided to continue our cooperation with DriveNow. The Vedia experiment was also very valuable, because it sparked some new ideas: now that we have successfully tested the technology for sharing a single car between several users, we are looking into ways of using our existing fleet more efficiently.
“We will launch another pilot around this idea in spring 2018. It will be done in Germany with a partner called Ubeeqo. We will outfit a few of our leased cars with their car sharing technology, and the cars can then be used for travelling between Nokia sites in Munich and Stuttgart as well as for visiting clients.
“All in all, we now see different forms of car sharing as user-friendly and often economical alternatives to traditional car rentals and taxi rides across our business travel destinations globally.”
Time to submit your bright ideas on the future of mobility
Why do you think someone wanting to make a difference in a ripe-for-disruption industry should keep an eye on Open Ecosystem Network?
“On OPEN, you can take a peek on what’s going on inside a huge corporation like Nokia. What are the problems we are trying to tackle, or the opportunities we’d like to seize right now? Making yourself known at the right moment can be the gateway to either closing a deal or testing and developing your solution in real life with an actual client.
“And if things work out well, a global company like Nokia can really help a smaller enterprise to get a kickstart in scaling up their business internationally.”
Are there any open opportunities for avid mobility disruptors right now?
“Yes! We are currently calling for innovative ideas and solutions in a challenge called The Future of Mobility, which will be open until June 2018.
“We have already received some very interesting proposals around Mobility-as-a-Service, for example. There’s still plenty of room for startups, growth companies, existing partners and even our clients to join in, and we are prepared to build real business partnerships around the most promising initiatives. I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas!”
The Future of Mobility challenge is open for disruptive ideas and solutions around mobility until June 2018. You need to register in order submit a proposal – don’t worry, it’s free!