Molson is a leading UK-based dealer in heavy machinery, supplying everything from wheeled loaders to excavators to a wide range of customers across construction and industry. With over £100 million in annual revenue, the company handles both new and used equipment, along with parts, repairs, and financing options. While its roots are in traditional plant sales, Molson is now investing in digital transformation — partnering with external developers to create software that streamlines its services and closes a growing innovation gap.

Molson engaged us to design and build a Customer Portal aimed at modernizing how clients — typically fleet managers — interact with the company for ongoing service and parts support. The existing processes were fragmented and largely manual, relying on spreadsheets, phone calls, and paper forms. The task was to centralize and streamline these interactions through a digital platform that would improve efficiency, reduce friction, and bring much-needed structure to Molson’s customer-facing operations.

To kick off the project, we facilitated workshops with Molson’s client base to uncover operational pain points and understand day-to-day service challenges faced by fleet managers. After aligning with internal stakeholders, we moved into delivery with a focused MVP that allowed users to track their machinery assets and identify maintenance issues that could be booked directly through the portal. This initial version was deployed to a handful of large clients, targeting select machines to gather early feedback and enable comparison against their traditional workflows.

While the MVP remains in an experimental phase, it has already surfaced critical insights. Chief among them: real-time telematics at scale is technically fragmented and often unreliable, with varying machine systems and inconsistent third-party trackers. However, the value of solving this challenge is clear — Molson’s customers strongly validated the need, viewing it as a major lever for operational efficiency. This enthusiasm led Molson to commit to its first £1 million contract with the agency, and to begin expanding its digital roadmap, including a new e-commerce and pricing portal for dealers. Perhaps most crucially, the project reframed Molson’s understanding of customer needs — revealing that many clients would benefit more from simple, structured task tracking rather than fully automated, data-heavy systems.

Looking ahead, one of the most promising opportunities lies in expanding the portal to support plant hire management. Rather than simply enabling hire requests, users expressed interest in tools to help track, manage, and maintain hired equipment within their existing fleets. This aligns closely with their operational realities and could significantly improve visibility and efficiency. While still a long-term consideration, this capability has the potential to drive wider adoption and further position the portal as an indispensable tool in the day-to-day running of customer operations.