BRP transforms from a product-focused to an experience-focused company

Gearing up for new adventures

As a leading power sports vehicle manufacturer, BRP is known for being the brains behind household adventure brand names such as Ski-Doo, Sea-Doo, and Can-Am. Looking to protect and grow its business, BRP realized that there was a tremendous opportunity to innovate and grow beyond its core product while complementing its existing offerings. Realizing that it needed to think and act differently in order to innovate in areas outside of its traditional expertise, BRP teamed up with innovation teams from Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange (AIE) and frog, Capgemini’s creative consultancy unit. Together, they unlocked a new level of growth by branching off BRP’s business endeavors into new territory.

“People spend around $13 billion on these machines, but they actually spend $40 billion on things in and around the machines”, says Jeremy Duhamel, Head of BRP-X.

While BRP is known and recognized for its amazing vehicle innovations, building new digital experiences represented a substantial departure from its core expertise. Therefore, the journey started with the realization that a new innovation entity was required to truly bring innovative breakthrough experiences to market. This support came in the form of BRP-X, the innovation lab set up by the partners to focus on developing new experiences. After working with BRP to establish this new unit, Capgemini continued to work hand-in-hand with the team to ideate, test, build, and pilot new experiences.

“The groundwork for the initiative was the creation of BRP-X, BRP’s very own in-house innovation lab, which we built with the help of Capgemini’s innovation experts,” says Simon Cazelais, Vice-President, Global Brand Strategy and Innovation, BRP. “The Capgemini team helped us put in place a vision for the lab along with a structure, process, and KPIs to go from ideation to in-market execution. Once the was lab set up, the Capgemini team worked collaboratively with us on the process of exploring different innovation avenues for the business.”

The project team helped develop a view of key growth opportunity areas beyond BRP’s core business and subsequently explored the needs and interests of riders to understand where BRP could fit in. Several possible concepts were defined, tested with end-users, and refined before entering the build phase to ensure they were validated and tested for risks before the company made further investments.

For example, the BRP-X team identified the difficulty customers experienced when trying to find and book new places to ride as a pain point.

“More often than not when you want to go ATV riding, it’s not just a matter of jumping on your machine,” explains Sebastien Jouvenaar, Head of Capgemini AIE New York. “You have to put the machine on a trailer, and then you drive 10, 50, or 100 miles, only to find the land closed or at capacity, and then have a hard time finding alternative areas to go ride. You may also want to go camping, fishing, or hunting, so there’s a lot involved in those occasions.”

This inspired the idea to create an online marketplace that could bridge the gap between landowners and riders. The result was an online platform called Uncharted Playgrounds, which now gives people more opportunities to ride their vehicles, thereby enabling BRP to reach a broader audience and invite them to join the community. At the same time, private and institutional landowners would have a chance to monetize unused acres of land.

“Think Airbnb, but for land access to connect landowners with riders,” says Jouvenaar.

For BRP, the concept unlocks growth opportunities in multiple business areas beyond direct platform revenue, including vehicle sales, spare parts sales, and events.

From Texas to Australia and beyond

The team took only four months to build and launch the pilot. During that time, Capgemini brought in a multidisciplinary team of innovators – from technologists to designers to strategists – all sharing a common entrepreneurial spirit that ensured they were ready to face any challenges along the way. BRP and Capgemini worked as one team, with daily scrums assigning tasks to each member.

“The whole team felt very invested in this. It felt as much like our entrepreneurial endeavor as BRP’s,” describes Jouvenaar. “So, when we were initially struggling to get the landowners’ attention, we all picked up the phones and started pitching the concept to them one on one.”x

For the first launch, the goal was to build a very agile solution that would allow BRP to test and quickly pivot if necessary. The team scheduled multiple releases during the pilot phase and prioritized features as needed based on user feedback.

“We knew that riders would make up approximately 70% of users on the platform, so we prioritized their experience first. Then we fleshed out the user experience for landowners, which make up approximately 10-20%,” says Duhamel.

Within just months of successfully launching the platform in Texas, Uncharted      Playgrounds has expanded to an additional six states and even to Australia, covering 1.5 million acres of land in total. This means, the team also tripled their target KPIs for landowner acquisition while thousands of riders have engaged with the platform. Now, BRP’s ambition is to eventually expand its reach to all of the United States and Europe.

While Uncharted Playgrounds has made both riders and landowners happy, it has also helped BRP with its broader mandate of moving away from being seen as a vehicle brand. Instead, this represents a major part of the company’s effort to achieve recognition within the industry as an experience brand.