Viaconnect

For Viaconnect, it was immediately clear during the development of Coolgradient that they had a golden opportunity in their hands. The product focuses on the energy efficiency of data centers. With software developed by Viaconnect, based on artificial intelligence, they save up to 25% - a game-changer in this energy-consuming sector. As a consultancy group, Viaconnect provides experts in fields such as data science and engineering. But launching an innovative product? That requires a go-to-market strategy with the right focus.

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What MakerLab excels at is establishing the strategic justification for a product. Business developer David Lijnse took on this validation process: from a strong concept to a successful product launch with concrete sales leads.

The danger with a technically complex product is that you may want to convey too much. After a year and a half of product development, the Coolgradient team knew exactly what their software could do and who their customers were. But what's the core story of your product? In marketing a product, you only have a small window to tell this story. To get to that core, at MakerLab, we divide a business design sprint into 3 phases:

1. Deep dive In this phase, David depicted the brand, the product, and the market. A DNA session with Coolgradient on one hand and interviews with data center managers on the other revealed a discrepancy between who the team was and what the brand needed to convey. The product is innovative, requiring an adventurous approach. However, a data center manager tends to be extremely risk-averse. How do you ensure that these values both come through without conflicting with each other?

2. Research All the gaps that remained after the deep dive have now been filled. By conducting interviews with industry experts, our business designer David was able to define a clear value proposition and market positioning.

3. Design In the final phase, we steamrolled the team to ready-to-pitch status.

David then provided marketing agency MIX, a sister company of MakerStreet, with a concise validation document - the foundation of a robust sales narrative. In this so-called core document, they captured the positioning, brand values, and message of the software product Coolgradient. Mix transformed all of these results into an impressive sales deck. This allowed Viaconnect to approach potential customers with compelling visuals and a substantively strong sales pitch. It immediately generated a few significant leads from some of the world's largest data centers.

Also read the interview with MakerLabs business designer David Lijnse and Mark Schoones, managing partner of marketing agency MIX.

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