BCA Buyer App.
A trade-buyer's digital assistant — transforming the vehicle buying experience at both physical and online auctions, on every device.
Context.
Why BCA needed to rethink the trade-buyer experience from the ground up.
Launch an app that transforms trade vehicle buying — physical and online.
BCA is the leading end-to-end digital B2B used-car marketplace across the UK and Europe. But before COVID, 70% of vehicles were sold at physical auction — only 30% online. Years of investment had gone into the Vendor experience while trade buyers were left behind.
New leadership wanted to signal BCA's commitment to its digital proposition by launching an app for trade buyers. The suggested approach — mirror the online auction platform — would have been a missed opportunity. So with my product counterpart, I proposed a design-led innovation programme to properly understand buyers and deliver something more desirable.
- Ideation
- Workshop facilitation
- Strategy
- Design direction
- Team leadership
The Challenge.
Seven structural problems standing between BCA and a great buyer experience.
The existing trade-buyer experience was carrying decades of legacy. Bid capture and sales were slow at physical auction. Online and offline lived in separate worlds. Tech was over twenty years old. And a large slice of the buyer base wasn't digitally fluent.
- No visibility of buyers attending physical auctions.
- Limited bidding data — underbidder activity not captured at physical auction.
- Bid capture and sales process slow at physical auction.
- Online auction platform built on technology over two decades old.
- A large proportion of the buyer base lacking digital proficiency.
- Two separate online experiences for searching and buying vehicles.
- Online buying fee per vehicle — a £14M+ revenue stream tied to old tech.
70% of sales still happened in person.
Despite years of digital investment elsewhere in the business.
One app. Both worlds. Never miss a bid.
Bridge physical and online buying in a single experience.
“Mirroring the online auction platform would have been a missed opportunity to truly understand buyers and deliver a more desirable experience.”
The Approach.
Two parts: align senior stakeholders, then run a design-led innovation programme.
Problem framing workshop.
A three-hour workshop with senior stakeholders across product, engineering, commercial and operations. Aligned the team on direction and needs, agreed roles and priorities, defined the target audience, mapped the existing journey and pain points, and ran an ideation session against the framed problems.
Rapid, collaborative, design-led delivery.
A holistic solution letting buyers manage their entire purchasing experience — never miss an opportunity to bid, integrate intelligence and insights to drive profitability, and deliver a market-leading multi-device experience while resolving the legacy feedback from buyers and stakeholders.
The Design Process.
A four-phase innovation initiative spanning seven weeks and an ongoing build.
Discovery & Vision
3 weeks
Landscape assessment, evaluation of existing data and tech, vision and goals, user research, ideation, and creation of the product backlog.
Proof of Concept
2 weeks
Brought one or more chosen areas of focus to life — rapid creative and technical work to deliver a clickable prototype simulating the experience.
Iteration & Validation
2 weeks
Tested and refined the prototype with real trade buyers, both physical and online, then iterated against findings to lock the direction.
Develop MLP
Ongoing
Productionised the validated experience with the cross-functional build team — shipping iteratively while live research continued in parallel.
Discovery & Vision.
Getting close to the trade buyer — physical and online.
A small cross-functional team formed quickly. We reviewed all historical research and analytics, then ran workshops with specialists from Customer Service and BDE teams to build deeper insight into buyer needs. Competitive and comparative research benchmarked the field — and then we went into the rooms with real buyers, both at physical auctions and online.
The resulting wireframe became a digestible single source of truth — used to validate with users and secure C-Suite buy-in.
Trade-buyer research at both physical auctions and online platforms.
Specialist workshops with the teams closest to buyers daily.
The Solution.
Not the auction platform on a phone — a buying assistant in your pocket.
A clickable prototype validated with real buyers became the foundation for the live product — a single experience usable by both physical and online buyers. Tracked sales, live bidding, personalised feeds and intelligent insights, all branded and consistent on every device.
Results.
From UK launch to ongoing investment and European rollout.
After a successful UK launch the app became the direction-of-travel for European markets. Search and live bidding were added in the twelve months after initial launch, and the experience evolved into the engine for anonymous digital interactions between buyers and vendors — increasing selling speed and opening up new sales channels.
Just as importantly: happy teams, happy stakeholders, and long-term investment committed to the app's roadmap.
of the trade-buyer base using the app within the first six months.
of all pre-sale engagement now flows through the app.
Testimonials.
From senior leadership at Constellation Automotive Group.
First-class leader who is able to extract maximum performance from any team. His clarity of strategic thinking was critical in Constellation being first to market.
One of the most talented design leaders I've worked with. A rare entrepreneurial mindset, key to the quick development of multiple products we launched as a team.
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