Client stories
From Idea to Implementation: Building a Customer-Centric New Service with Retta
From Idea to Implementation: Building a Customer-Centric New Service with Retta
Retta Oy is a leading Finnish company working in the real estate management industry. Established with a vision to redefine how people live and interact with their homes, Retta Oy offers innovative solutions that enhance the quality of life of its customers.
One of the cornerstones of Retta’s future growth is the Retta Accelerator, which aims at developing bold new services for its customers.
Sampo Lehtiniemi and Eemeli Metsäntähti, Entrepreneurs in Residence at Coventures, have partnered with Retta to help develop and pilot one of these new services. At Coventures, our team not only advises but also actively joins the client team, providing hands-on support for implementation. Our experts, like Sampo and Eemeli, have a long history of building and growing businesses. Their successes and failures through out their careers have given them business-building wisdom that is hard to get by in most corporate settings, which is why we provide our customers with the unique support that we do.
The journey towards building this new business began with a comprehensive study. Sampo and Eemeli, together with the Retta team, conducted interviews with domain experts and bench marked existing companies worldwide doing innovative residential and commercial property services. By gathering insights and analyzing the market trends, they identified several potential service options that could also be developed at Retta.
From their options, the team performed a detailed analysis, weighing the benefits, costs, and potential income of each. The insight allowed Retta to select the most promising idea, which aligned with their objectives and strengths. With the chosen option in hand, the team proceeded to validate their idea by speaking firsthand with customers. They also developed a compelling pitch deck and business case that would resonate with the management team at Retta.
It was then time to move into a piloting phase to determine the viability of the idea, aiming to assess customer interest and willingness to pay for the service.
The first step was to identify a good location to launch the pilot, requiring analysis and domain-specific views from the core group. Once the location was selected, the new service concept was introduced to the local Retta team. Sales materials, business model, pricing, and prioritizing potential clients were worked on together iteratively with key stakeholders. Sampo and Eemeli were also involved in the sales process, booking sales meetings with interested customers, and holding them.
By securing the first paying customers, the pilot phase demonstrated the initial business value and confirmed that people are genuinely interested in this new service. From there, the team confidently moved forward in building the basic operations for the new service. At this point, the service was run entirely manually: The team wanted to experience directly what running the business requires, before suggesting IT automation or other operative investments.
Having successfully validated the new service, this project has now moved on to its third phase - scaling and expansion.
Armed with valuable firsthand feedback and real-world data from their pilot, Retta can now make more informed decisions on how to grow the service into more areas in Finland.
This expansion will involve leveraging strategies that have proven effective during the pilot, refining & automating the service model based on feedback, all the while maintaining a strong focus on customer satisfaction.
Throughout this project, Coventures has provided substantial assistance, starting from the idea conception and extending to the building and testing of our new service from its foundation. Their fluid and adaptive working style resonates well with our team, as we collectively examined insights and progressed to deliver this new service to our customer base. Our partnership with Coventures has been consistently invigorating and marked by their experience and organized process. - Lauri Leino (StrategySVP) & Salla Hurnonen (Director of Digital Business Acceleration)
Building a new business is not a linear process. Eemeli and Sampo’s hands-on approach helped to better understand the business challenges, and fine-tune the offering along the way.In total, the pilot and validation phase lasted four months, which is a testament to both Eemeli and Sampo’s expertise, but also Retta’s profound domain knowledge and engagement throughout the process.
This case with Retta is a great example of how we can effectively support clients in developing new business concepts and piloting them quickly. Sampo and Eemeli’s guidance extended beyond strategic advice, as they actively participated in building the new service from scratch. Also, Retta’s commitment to working as a team with our Entrepreneurs in Residence was a major factor in the success of this project. Coventures continues to support Retta in developing this new service, and we look forward to seeing future progress.