After developing first version of SINER platform in 2015 and testing it (and the different versions we developed afterwards) in several real industrial symbiosis projects in Catalonia, we needed to identify the best value proposition to grow.
The overall aim of the SINER SME instrument project is to develop the SINER platform/ under commercial conditions and demonstrate its potential to industry related stakeholders. This Phase 1 permit us understanding the potential market and mitigate any risk, achieving the following outcomes:
• we targeted user/client profiles in the 4 beachhead markets prioritised as well as in other parts of Europe
• we identified their needs and pains (through direct meetings/interviews to 47 future potential clients) adapting the SÍNERS’s value proposition to their requirements and suggestions
• we analysed current situation of the existing industrial symbiosis IT tools in Europe and around the world learning about their specific cases, tendencies in the sector and academia surveys of IS issues.
• we identified technical specifications according to client’s requirements learning about what to do, with which technologies, with who…
• we developed the business plan showing the business model, rout-to-market, penetration-marketing strategy and approach to clients for the demonstration, inception and full-scale commercialisation.
The market analysis showed us there are 5 main types of clients:
a) Municipalities. For both strategic and operational reasons Municipalities (<20.000 inhabitants) will need information regarding resources and industry in order to have a starting vision point, a map, flowchart. Consultancy or experts are needed to transform our data (SINERbox).
b) IS consultancy companies (acting as “representatives” of the product to be sold to a) and b) in their area of influence) & IS IT tools developers.
c) Singular/territorial projects (basically Government or public projects), Circular economy/Industrial symbiosis territorial projects.
d) Companies associations & territorial managers (municipalities, local administrations, industrial parks…) implementing circular economy/industrial symbiosis projects.
The meetings and interviews with potential future clients gave us valuable information about their needs and expectations. The basically need high quality information to find potential added value that can be derived from a wasted resource, as a way to improve processes, reduce cost and innovate towards circular economy strategies. Quality is, then, a priority.
By the moment, most of the potential clients do not use data to manage their projects or hire consultancies to find them, because they don’t know where to find them and manage that “virgin” data. Almost none of them knew any of the existing platforms in the markets.
Although around 22 industrial symbiosis platforms have been recently developed, only 6 are currently in use, and those 6 are basically “market place” platforms. All of them would like to have synergies data bases but it is so difficult to achieve that they failed, in between other reasons because everybody was working individually.
This issue, and our own experience developing the existing SINER platform, brought us to the main conclusion of adapting our platform towards an OPEN ACCESS business model, highly interconnected with other platforms, working together for benefit of all.
