Client Situation
Our client is a large multinational chemical company headquartered in the US. It has over $35 billion in revenue and about 36,000 employees in its 90 locations around the world. The client focuses on organic chemistry and new value-added materials. In the case of this project, Cedar worked with the firm’s manufacturing plant in the southeastern US in the development and marketing of a new dielectric material for electric power transformers. The client wanted to understand the North American distribution and power transformer market, utilities’ needs regarding the dielectric fluids used, their costs, performance and safety. This information would be used to develop a development strategy for the product and a branding strategy for its launch into the market.
Cedar’s Approach
In the first program phase, Cedar was mandated to provide detailed technology and market analyses of North American transformers and dielectric fluids. The second phase defined the cost and performance targets for the new product and it branding.
- Collected primary and secondary information on transformers, dielectric fluids and companies in the transformer and dielectric fluid industries.
- Interviewed electric utilities throughout North America regarding their transformer fleet, use of dielectric fluids and unmet needs.
- Conducted webcasts with the client every week to share findings and data.
- Worked with our client to determine demand for its new product, pricing target, applications and branding.
Outcome
The program resulted in the development of a new safer and cost-effective dielectric fluid material for use in distribution and power transformers. The results included
- Identified key performance and cost targets for the new dielectric material.
- Completed a competitive assessment of other dielectric fluids and how our client could displace them at various utilities.
- Developed a launch plan and strategy for the new dielectric fluid along with a branding strategy.
- Resulted in a successful launch of a new dielectric material for transformer applications with cost effective performance, higher safety and environmental sustainability.
- We made Strategy Work.