Clearing a path to a smarter snowplow experience
Boss Snowplow, a subsidiary of The Toro Company, has spent nearly four decades building quality, durable snow and ice management equipment for commercial and residential use. Every Boss product is designed around the same principles: ease of use, uncompromising quality, and a high level of craftsmanship, giving small business owners and homeowners equipment they can depend on through the toughest winters.
Vervint partnered with The Toro Company and Boss to dig into their existing snowplow usage data and map new opportunities to automate equipment maintenance, cut down on wasted materials, and give owners better visibility into their fleets, all in service of a simpler, more valuable experience for owners and operators.
Get everyone rowing in the same direction
Align business and technical teams around a shared vision for the snowplow experience.
Make the most of the data they already had
Understand what usage data Boss already had and identify the gaps before investing further.
Know where to invest first
Build a prioritized roadmap so Boss could tackle the highest-impact improvements first.
When the data told a different story
Boss’s compact snowplows already collected valuable usage data, tracking location, condition, fuel and salt levels, and more, to help small businesses manage compliance and liability. But Boss suspected that data could do more: sharpen the relationship between Boss and its customers and unlock new value for owners and operators.
Vervint started by inventorying everything Boss already had, then went straight to the source. Boss’s working assumption was that operators wanted an app to see their snowplow’s telematics in real time. User research and stakeholder interviews told a different story. Instead, the team surfaced hundreds of ideas rooted in what customers actually needed, then narrowed them down through ideation and visualization into three clear pathways to a better experience: process, materials, and people.
Three paths to a better experience
Process. Use Boss Snowplow data to automate equipment maintenance, forecasting parts lifecycle and looping in distributor service support before a breakdown happens. Longer term, an eCommerce integration would streamline the process further and cut operating expenses for owners.
Materials. Fuel and salt are unpredictable, but costly, variables for any snowplow business. Vervint mapped a “now, near, and far” roadmap starting with manual presets for how much salt to spread over a given area, building toward automated dispensing and more accurate forecasting down the road.
People. With a fleet of equipment spread across a service area, keeping track of independent operators is one of the hardest parts of running a small snowplow business. Vervint prioritized real-time GPS tracking, machine security and lo-jack lockdown capabilities, and, longer term, using snowplow data to help owners optimize how their operators work.
With a clear roadmap for turning their existing data into real value, Boss is positioned to save owners and operators time, money, and effort, helping their small businesses grow while deepening the loyalty that’s kept customers coming back for nearly four decades. It’s simplicity delivered, the same uncompromising quality and craftsmanship Boss has always built into its equipment, now built into the experience around it.
