Advisory
With decades of experience advising organisation on the development of generation-defining ideas and innovation, Ricardo's engineering advisory service supports clients in identifying opportunity and jumpstarting ideas.
Experts at your fingertips
Ricardo's advisory taps into our team across the value chain to provide advanced research and market expertise to clients who are looking to reimagine their products, services or processes. We look deeply within our client's markets - and adjacent markets - to provide current benchmarking and develop product strategies that help them standout.
Plus, experts in value chain, life cycle assessment, expert witness and emissions legislation to address client needs.
Industry outlook and positioning
Ricardo analyses high-impact external factors and their implications for product and business strategy. This analysis covers topics including customer and market trends, technology trends, legislative and regulatory action, and the behaviour and strategies of competitors.
We can provide comprehensive and actionable insight into how to respond to competitors. Analysing the industry landscape, assessing a client’s portfolio and product positioning in relation to its competitors and how its products are differentiated and developing a value proposition of individual products and their unique selling propositions. All of this enables clients to better position themselves in a competitive environment.
Proven AI-enabled regulatory cascade
Ricardo has developed, deployed and proven a proprietary AI-enabled regulatory cascade which dramatically reduces manual effort and the time needed to review and interpret regulatory and certification standards. This cascade is based on multiple large language models (LLMs) and fine-tuned by our in-house experts, and means that we are able to deliver high-value outputs – in multiple languages for different countries – that are audit-ready, thereby saving engineering resources, time and costs.
In building this system, we put a high priority on security and confidentiality. Our model is designed to ensure that there are no data leaks and that data will not be used to train LLMs.
Ricardo has developed an intellectual property (IP) search methodology that is able to identify potential infringement risks and provide design recommendations to mitigate them. This tool can analyse IP activity by competitors and start-ups as well as identify IP trends and the relevant key players and emerging technologies. It can also help with product design and the functionality of key components as well as carry out targeted patent searches to identify potential infringement risks.
Ricardo can perform benchmarking analysis of competitor brands, examining their brand and product strategy and their primary segments and applications. We can also provide a detailed breakdown of competitors’ offerings to provide insight on design, materials and sourcing. In addition, we can provide assessments of comparative products as well as insights and recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Ricardo can review business categories to analyse demand and explore emerging and incremental categories to identify opportunities for growth. Through market segmentation and modelling, we can assess the market potential of different categories and geographies. We can also help identify the size of potential markets through TAM-SAM-SOM analysis and provide insights on adoption scenarios.
Ricardo can provide detailed analysis of market opportunities and product positioning, looking at customer’s desires and gaps in the market, as well as providing insight on product and portfolio optimisation, value propositions and where a competitive edge can be gained. As well as offering tools to aid pricing strategies by aligning customer considerations with business objectives, we can provide integrated financial modelling along with sensitivity and risk analysis.
In preparing the launch of customer products into the market, Ricardo can help draw up a coherent customer and channel strategy that defines the target segments and the optimal ways to engage with them via appropriate messaging. Our experts can help with optimising product value and commercial models according to each segment, as well as provide roadmaps for certification, geographical expansion, and the introduction of new features.
Ricardo can provide insights on clients’ manufacturing footprint, comparing existing plans with alternatives and evaluating them in relation to sales plans, as well as assess the potential implications from tariffs and transportation costs. We offer high-quality processes for optimising and scaling automation and processes, assembly and manufacturing, and documentation such as instructions and manuals.
We can also provide recommendations on sourcing strategy in terms of when components should be built and when they should be bought, carry out top-down and bottom-up should-cost modelling, and offer insights on supply-chain reliability and resilience.
Expert Witness
Ricardo’s Expert witness team leverage our domain and product knowledge to maximise the success of clients’ cases.
Our world-class experts provide you and your clients with a trusted, comprehensive service giving robust independent expert opinion, founded on our direct experience in regulation, industry and policy. We offer both phased batch or ad-hoc support that you can tailor.
Our experts are supported by over 150 in-house specialists in automotive, commercial vehicles, defence, motorsports, motorcycle, and off-highway vehicles in global markets. Our multi-domain expertise means that are the trusted partner of many of the industry leading organisations across the globe.
Vehicle emissions legislation database
Our vehicle emissions legislation (EMLEG) database helps businesses understand changing global vehicle and engine emissions standards and regulations.
The comprehensive, global database contains clear summaries of the latest emissions legislation, technical information and CO2 emissions standards to help individuals and businesses keep up to date with the latest regulations.
A subscription to Ricardo’s EMLEG database makes it simple by delivering expert curated information and support on a range of emissions legislation topics.
Contact Ricardo about our advisory services today
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