A U.S. auto manufacturer approached us complaining about an inability to effectively allocate resources based on the highest priority projects in their R&D group. Simply put, they wanted to come up with a credible way of overcoming the pressure of internal politics in canceling or scaling pack certain projects while promoting others. Over time the prediction market proliferated to other geographies and use cases.
Participants
Global participation (site was locally translated in three languages)
R&D Project Managers
Predictive Analytics
Product engineers
Financial forecasters
Marketing
Primary Use
Prioritizing internal research projects
Allocating resources based on probability of projects achieving stated success metrics
Prioritizing features to include in vehicles
Quarterly sales forecasts of various vehicle lines
Sample Questions
Will research project X make it in to a product line by X year?
Will research project X achieve milestone Y by this date?
What will be the sales volume for vehicle X ending in the 4th quarter?
Will feature X receive scores higher than Y during focus group testing?
Problems Solved
Direct cost savings by canceling projects the business decided could not contribute to the bottom line
Accelerate those projects deemed to have real business benefit. Quicker implementation means quicker profits or efficiencies from those projects
Improved sales forecasts improves demand planning
Communication across different parts of the organization and geographies improved significantly
