Driving change with pedal power

The challenge

 The idea for bike leasing originated in Germany where Pon, the owner of Bike Mobility Services, has a factory. They were investing in a new line of very high-value e-bikes, when they started to reflect on who would buy them.

Given Pon’s strong history in car leasing, they determined that the time was right to introduce leasing for the bike market and develop a platform for employers, employees, and bike dealers to manage bike leasing.

Bike Mobility Services (BMS), the cluster of Pon Bike that is focused on developing sustainable and affordable bicycle mobility solutions, developed bike leasing solutions that are made available through (local) brands such as Lease a Bike and BusinessBike. However, with time it became evident that they could not grow their offering with the original platform vendor.

The solution

Bike Mobility Services therefore approached us to take over the platform. We set up all the processes around business value estimation, DevOps, etc. and supported BMS in scaling their business.

The collaboration started with a one-off project and, thanks to the trust that the project team was able to gain, has led to more and more projects linked to the Cloud. The Cloud platform serves as the core upon which all business capabilities are built.

The clear, fast, and easy to use bike leasing platform is Amazon Web Services (AWS) based, meaning that the capacity to scale the platform is unlimited. For example, if there are many users on the platform and the service hits 100% CPU usage, they can double the capacity in a moment.

In the Netherlands, BMS also provides bike maintenance services through FietsNED. FietsNED employees use another platform developed by BMS to get a clear overview of their schedule, what they have to do for each customer, and how long it takes to go from A to B. They can list everything they have done and draw up a service report, making their job easier.

The results

When Bike Mobility Services invested in its bike leasing platform in 2018, they had a couple of hundred customers. In 2023, they have more than 50,000 employers on the platform and they serve half a million bike users.

Employers offer their employees the option to lease a personal bike as part of their benefits scheme through the local platform. Bike Mobility Services manages everything for the employer (funding), the employee (choosing the bike), and the dealer (selling the bike and receiving the payment).

The long-term focus of Bike Mobility Services and Deloitte is on creating a sustainable partnership to build the Bike Mobility Services platform of the future together.