VW Elli: Interim Product Managers from Product People Helped Launch an Internal Product and Reach 400k+ Charging Points

The Client: VW Elli

Elli is a brand from the Volkswagen Group, a provider of energy and charging solutions. They are the first provider on the market to offer a seamless and holistic energy and charging experience for electric car drivers and fleet managers.

Elli was founded in 2018, and they manage all customer needs at the interface between energy and mobility to make the benefits of the energy transition to people around the world - smooth and hassle-free.

With that goal in mind, they offer different products that fall into the following categories:

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During the mission, we focused on the “Public Charging & Payment/Billing” category. There, we have 2 main products:

• Elli Charging App which enables Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers to charge their cars and pay.

• Charging Network Management tools that enable Charging Point Operators (CPOs) in public charging and billing. That’s where our responsibility was located and it included work on 3 different products in different stages.

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The Mission: Interim Product Manager

When we joined Elli, they used a third-party partner platform for their Charging Network Management Tool. But, the team already had a roadmap in place to build their own tool, launch it in Q1, and migrate all their customers by the end of year. The Product Owner responsible for this initiative was leaving in 2 weeks, so time was of the essence.

The mission goal was clear:

Develop further the tools to operationalize an independent charging network. Ready to migrate Hubs and CPOs to the new network management solution (i.e. CPO Dashboard).

Stakeholders & Business Units Involved

Stakeholders - Engineering Team | Product Team | Designer | Partner Manager Team

Duration of the Project

9 months: October 2022 to June 2023

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Our Main Quest

Launch: Onboarded Very Fast

We jumped in quickly to provide a helping hand at a time when the product development team was in need. We focused on identifying topics to prioritize in Sprint Planning and discovering new user needs.

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Initiative 1 - CPO Dashboard - Preparing for Every Migration

Problem:

• Elli was using a Third-Party Partner Platform to connect to different Hubs, Roaming Platforms, and CPOs.
• The platform had different issues and missing features which prevented Elli from using it in its intended way.

What has been done:

• We’ve created and delivered on the Migration Plan which means that we stopped using the Third-Party Partner Platform and instead used the internal Elli product (i.e. CPO Dashboard).

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Initiative 2 - CPO Dashboard Going Live and Parma Entering CPOs and Tariffs

Problem:

• One of the business teams in Elli needed to enter multiple CPOs and tariffs into the console manually in the product that didn’t exist yet.

What has been done:

• Multiple education sessions on manual CPO and Tariff entry with the Partner Manager team
• Successfully coordinated multiple CPO and Tariff entry sessions for each migration to the CPO Dashboard

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Initiative 3 - CPO Dashboard - Tariff Creation Wizard

Problem:

• Missing certain steps and fields in the process of creating the tariffs in the console which were important for the initial launch.

What has been done:

• After going through 150+ contracts that contained different tariffs, we discovered that we’re missing multiple features to enter tariffs.
• Based on our discovery work, we worked with a designer to get new mockups and prioritized building the features in upcoming sprints.
• Managed to finish the wizard in time while clarifying to stakeholders what has been out of scope and why we can’t cover all the situations.

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Delivered Outcomes

💡 In 2021, Elli had no internal charging network and the entire network went through a  third-party partner platform. At the end of our mission, Elli’s internal network consisted of over 500k charging points and was on the road to terminating the contract of 6-digit euro value with the Third-party Partner Platform.

💡 Launched our own product (i.e. CPO Dashboard) and migrated the 3 largest and multiple smaller hubs to the CPO Dashboard. On May 10th, we had 785 CPOs in our console from these hubs.

💡 Set up for success the new Product Manager who joined the company with handover documentation and proposed a Roadmap until the end of Q2 and Q3 2023 with refined tickets.