Izix
Creating a roadmap and a prioritisation process for B2B software focussed on parking lot logistics

About Izix
Izix is a Brussels-based startup that focuses on parking management. They handle the logistics so vehicles can enter and exit parking lots; ensuring the parking gate opens, calculation of occupancy and handling reservations. Izix does so for building owners who have a complex parking lot with multiple floors, even multiple locations and multiple tenants within this building.
From a parking service to SaaS parking management software
Bepark, the mother company of Izix, traditionally rented out parking spots from different (private) parking owners. After a while they started renting out unused spots through their website; becoming the Airbnb for unused parking spots.
To service more clients and parking lots, Bepark decided to split off the software to manage all operations in its own company; Izix. The software of Izix allows drivers to open a gate of a selected parking, calculate where there are still parking spot available and much more. Bepark became a client of Izix.

Prioritisation struggles
Izix was struggling with prioritisation process:
- Stakeholders had different vision on the right priorities
- Support teams were doing a lot of tedious manual work (like generating pricing reports what each company had to pay for the usage of the parking spots)
- The market was rapidly changing and they couldn't keep up
- Izix was rapidly growing and had 100 things to handle at once
The most urgent question was what features should be built first?
Optimising communication between stakeholders
First, we looked into the current situation to understand how the existing product had been managed and what the targets were. That's where we found the biggest pressure.
We then focussed on creating clear communication lines. We instilled
regular, clear communication moments; weekly insights checks, monthly
updates based on discussion between CSM, CEO, CTO and product. We also
visualised and created transparency to all stakeholders by visualising
what we were working on in Productboard.

Creating a clear prioritisation process
Lastly, we created a clear prioritisation process. We collected insights based on customer feedback from different teams like sales and customer success. We scored the insights and categorised them into initiatives that we plotted on a roadmap over time. We highly focussed on communication of the roadmap and prioritisation process;
- Every week we discussed changes requested for the roadmap. Every new initiative needed to have clear goals and reasoning why it should be prioritised higher than what was already on the roadmap.
- We kept communicating how decisions were made; every quarter we explained the full team how we prioritised .
- We documented all decisions, visible to all in the company.
We didn't forget clients in this process. We communicated the roadmap, the current initiatives and the priorities to them as well without exact time commitments.
The value of Smooth Sailing extends beyond the product and helps create a better management team
Hi, I'm Hannes
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