A team of MBA students from MIT Sloan School of Management – one of the most prestigious business schools in the world – worked at Location World’s headquarters during January sharing new knowledge and high-impact analysis emphasizing in a Customer Experience project.
Location World is a company that develops telematics technology and new business models through IoT (Internet of Things) for the auto, transportation, security, logistics, and auto insurance industries, among others. Location World provides connected car solutions under the Carsync brand (B2B2C or B2C) and fleet management solutions (B2B), through its telematics SaaS (Software as a Service) model offered in nine countries, and with operations in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Colombia. Location World provides its services to more than 4,000 corporate clients.
The Global Entrepreneurship Program (G-Lab) student team’s task was to develop a strategic map to transform the organization into a customer centric model, as well as to analyze how the B2B and B2C products can be improved to increase customer satisfaction. Location World’s goal is to increase customer acquisition by 30%, increase revenue by 100%, and to reduce customer complaints by 20%.
Since the year 2000, G-Lab teams have worked with more than 375 host companies in emerging countries solving business problems in critical areas such as strategic growth, fund raising, market entry, pricing, and financial strategy
Throughout the process, MBA students obtain real world experience while applying microeconomic and macroeconomic frameworks, financial tools, as well as applying the role of culture and politics and other noneconomic variables.
According to Daniel Wainmann, President of Location World, “Location World is honored to be selected as part of MIT Sloan Global Entrepreneurship Program (G-Lab) with the objective of developing a customer centric strategy which will be implemented in our company at a regional level. Location World is a company based on a solid concept of innovation and disruption, which has allowed us to have a significant growth in the Latin-American market. We are certain that this project, in which we will work alongside the G-lab team, is a great opportunity to continue generating impact in the region”.
The MIT Sloan MBA students began working remotely from the MIT campus in September 2018, and they worked full-time on-site during the month of January. The final deliverable for this project includes a formal presentation containing high-impact tools that the company could start implementing immediately.
G-Lab is one of fifteen unique labs offered as part of MIT Sloan’s Action Learning that share a common theme of applied learning. Students solidify their learning by solving the host company’s challenges, and upon completion the students reflect on their leanings.
More than having them work on an ambitious project with great impact, it is interesting to hear the MIT Sloan MBA students’ perception of the project and Location World. Souhail Salty, David Murguia, Jasmine Shah and Min Lew shared their experiences of being part of this project and deepening their knowledge on one of the most important and disruptive companies in South America.
Min Lew claims that her time in Ecuador and Location World’s HQ was very important. She was moved by the generosity of the people, and believes that visit to the company changed her perspective on the company. “It is very hard to work remotely, so it was a hundred percent worth coming to Ecuador, conduct the client interviews, and see the operations in person. This would have been very hard to do from USA, so it was very valuable in the process…A lesson that I learned is the responsibility Location World has as a technology company in LATAM, because it needs to educate the consumer. The company may have exciting and interesting technologies, but Location World has to make sure that the consumer understands and can follow to go into the future. I do not think I would have realized that if I had not been here” says Lew.
On the other hand, Souhail Salty argues that according to his perspective the company has a vision into the future and it is open to improve, which made it easy to work with the past months.
Jasmine Shah emphasized on the importance of the host company being transparent when presenting data and the reality of what goes on. “Not only the desire of us being transparent and provide constructive criticism, but they have encouraged us stay true to the purpose of the project and to share our transparent opinion through our work and research. I believe we all have intellectually enjoyed the project”.
According to David Murguia, Location World’s collaborators have been crucial to the company’s growth. “There are few companies that say: we have to learn and do things fast, and learn from that. I truly believe Location world lives by that. I feel that the C-suite along with the rest of the team are willing to take that step, and the work that we have done is like painting a vision of how to take that step to improve”.