Business model development of a service to help improve the management of the water distribution systems

Abstract

CMI (Cockerill Maintenance et Ingénierie) is a Belgian group, offering expertise throughout the equipment whole life-cycle in the fields of energy, defense, steel manufacturing, environment, transport and industry. While previous years have demonstrated growth, the group wishes to perpetuate the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, John Cockerill, and combine expertise with technologies meeting the current needs. Through CMI innovation platform, the startup project LifeNet relies on the group’s experience to develop a new service addressing the challenges that the water sector is currently facing, i.e. aging infrastructure, non-revenue water, water stress, etc. Indeed, the lack of information on the network prevents an effective monitoring and management of the scarce resource. The emergence and commercialization of new technologies have created many opportunities to solve the latter.

This thesis aims to structure the ideation phase of the startup into a business model. Indeed, while the Internet-of-Things’ evolution offers the promise to make real-time monitoring accessible, many challenges remain, requiring a deep understanding of the technology through a literature research. The project relies on the lean-startup approach to co-construct quickly a solution adapted to the customer needs. Therefore, the project entails to first carry out a market study assessing the current situation in the water distribution market and determine the markets with the highest potential, their clients’ profile, and competitiveness. Based on the results, LifeNet took the decision to focus on a niche market. The market insights helped translating the trends and constraints into a sustainable business model supporting the feasibility of the solution. Nonetheless, capitalizing on the two pilots is needed to evaluate the full potential and convince the market of its utility. As the innovation platform is rather new, a reflection around the startup’s positioning within CMI and its skills development options, is proposed. CMI’s role into LifeNet’s development is assessed to disclose the synergies and constraints.