The transport sector must be revolutionized as part of the green shift. In urban areas, the bicycle will become an increasingly important means of transportation. With more expensive bikes, new challenges arise. The Norwegian start-up company Bikeloop makes future-oriented bicycle towers for safe and space-saving storage of bicycles. When the company was to develop the digital solution that will make the bicycle parking available to users, they chose Computas as a partner.

This summer, the world’s first Bikeloop opens at Kadettangen in Bærum for a group of pilot customers. Bikeloop is a future-oriented bicycle tower that offers safe and flexible bicycle parking in urban environments. With the help of a paternoster lift – a lift where the rooms are moved around in a loop – the bikes are stored at height in a space-saving and theft-proof way.

“It is an absolute requirement for the environment that we make major changes in the transport sector. It is therefore pleasing to see that cycling is on the rise as a popular alternative to traditional and less environmentally friendly means of transport”, says Hedda Heyerdahl, founder and CEO of Bikeloop.

The fact that we brought the interdisciplinary team from Computas with us from the start was crucial in that we got a complete picture of our needs and were able to develop a solid and scalable solution.

Kristian Lough Grimsgaard, CTO Bikeloop

A Bicycle Tower with User-experience in Focus

Heyerdahl brought valuable experience from when she started Norway’s first charging network for electric vehicles.

”It’s important to think innovatively in the face of major societal changes. Cycling is now where electric vehicles were 10-15 years ago, and the potential here is enormous. In the future, there will not be as much room for cars as there is today. Bicycles of all sizes and price ranges will take over. Therefore, we need more, safer, and more user-friendly bicycle parking options in city centers,” she says.

The Bikeloop bike tower can be placed both above and below ground. It contains a paternoster lift – a lift where the compartments are moved around in a loop – where up to 30 bicycles can be stored safely in only 7.8 m².

With her on the Bikeloop journey, Heyerdahl has had Kristian Lough Grimsgaard as CTO of the company. He explains that it has been crucial to develop a solution that makes it easy to both reserve a space, deliver and pick up the bicycle, and make payments through the Bikeloop app.

”When we were going from the drawing board to realizing Bikeloop, we needed a user-friendly solution that could make using the bike towers seamless. The fact that we got the cross-functional team from Computas from the start was crucial for us to get a complete picture of our needs and develop a solid and scalable solution,” says Lough Grimsgaard.

Crucial to Solving the Right Problem

When Computas was invited to collaborate with Bikeloop, they began with an insight phase where they, together with Bikeloop, defined the need and established a cross-functional team accordingly. Computas calls this insight-based approach ‘Solution as a Service’.

“Our experience is that some projects jump straight into solution development, without ensuring that they are solving the right problem. When we, together with our customers, are involved from the phase where we define the problem that actually needs to be solved, the result and the solution are usually both better and more user-oriented. And development becomes more efficient”, says Pål Vermund Knudsen.

He has been Computas’ project manager and solution architect, and has worked closely with Bikeloop from the start.

“We assembled a product team that took full responsibility for the solution – everything from design and needs, implementation methodology, to development and service management”, he says and adds:

“We have built a solid platform for Bikeloop, which has given them a future-proof solution that is geared for scaling. By utilizing several fully managed cloud services that quickly deliver business value, we have developed the solution faster and we will be able to scale in line with Bikeloop’s ambitious growth ambitions”, he says.

A Scalable and Flexible Solution

The digital solution Computas has delivered to power Bikeloop’s bike parking towers is built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Developing on a cloud platform was a natural choice for a startup, which starts without a technical legacy and desires a solution that is both innovative and scalable.

“Bikeloop’s bike towers are intended to be sold to everyone from developers to municipalities, in addition to some of them being owned by Bikeloop itself. When all towers are to use the same technical solution, both backend and towards the consumer, it also sets the premise for the technical solution to work well across multiple levels”, says Lough Grimsgaard.

For Bikeloop, Computas has delivered insight work, service design, solution architecture, and development for mobile, web, and backend. User testing has also been a natural part of the process and this work continues in connection with the opening of the first bike tower.

“Together with Computas, we have run several rounds of simulation, which we will continue to do now that the first ‘loop’ is going into operation. This has been absolutely necessary to optimize the solution and to avoid follow-on errors later”, concludes Lough Grimsgaard.