When passengers become peer-to-peer courriers

A Swiss public transport company was innovating business models that leveraged their existing infrastructure. To reduce the carbon footprint of Internet purchases, they were exploring a program where their passengers deliver parcels to each other at bus stops. Olympe developed a running prototype, not just mockups, in 6 days. The prototype was used in the field by real package deliverers and recipients to execute the use case end to end.

“The positive experience we had with Olympe during our concept exploration gave us the following opportunities: Being able to develop functional solutions in a few days, not limit ourselves to mock-ups, but also test functional aspects, being able to introduce the real-time concept across different systems, and correcting bugs detected on the fly, even during a test.” Innovation Manager, Swiss public transport company

The company wished to leverage its public transport network for passenger-to-passenger parcel deliveries and needed a web application to demonstrate the proof of concept. The app needed to combine live locations of the deliverer and recipient with the public transport route schedule to recommend the most favorable routes. It also needed functionality to verify the recipients identity and confirm package delivery. Four different user interfaces, with backends, were required for the real-time interaction among merchants, end consumers, and client admin staff. Developing this internally or using a development agency would have taken weeks or cost significant amounts.

Working in Olympe’s visual programming environment, the company’s innovation team largely built its own prototype with limited programming experience.

They used Olympe’s intuitive development platform to build their application on the fly. The app for the Colision project, complete with front and back-end, was developed in just 6 days!

No other development tool could have delivered such a project so fast, with its complex collaborative flow and multiple front ends needing to communicate in real-time.

The company continues to use Olympe as its development platform today

They love being able to develop functional solutions in a few days

They are not limited to mock-ups, but can also test functional aspects

They are able to introduce the real-time concept across different systems

They correct detected bugs on the fly, even during a test