Case study: Cyclescheme

End-to-end digital business strategy and technology for this Sunday Times Fast Track 100 winner.

The client

Cyclescheme is the UK’s largest provider of bikes under the UK government’s Cycle to Work initiative. It also comprises the nation’s single largest network of bike shops, in 2009 it was the UK’s fastest growing company in Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league, and it continues to evolve rapidly as a business.

What Loft is doing

Loft starting working with Cyclescheme shortly after the company was founded in 2006, on a platform to support the administration of this voucher-based scheme. Since then we have identified opportunities and launched new online technology almost every month, which has been central to Cyclescheme outperforming its competitors and the scheme’s overall success. Some key areas include:

• The integration and automation of the all company’s business process, enabling it run quickly, efficiently and at low cost
• Five integrated self-service extranet applications for hundreds of thousands of users in different groups
• A 360-degree user experience strategy and customer lifecycle programme to support the continued growth of the business
• Design and build of a carefully optimised, socially-oriented site to promote the scheme
• Online handling of the whole business cycle, from customer application through approval, payment, distribution and redemption to final reconciliation and payment of suppliers
• Fully automated management reports and business intelligence data
• International, white-labelled and customised editions of the platform
• A scalable, load-balanced systems architecture to support continued growth and security

Loft’s role in this is pro-active and responsive: we work with Cyclescheme on a monthly basis to identify new opportunities and issues as they arise, and respond to these well ahead of the market:

• Providing research, strategy, planning, design, development, support and management functions
• Responding to new technology and changing customer behaviour quickly
• Identifying business, design and process issues, and opportunities to make things more efficient
• Ensuring security, compliance and best practice as the business grows
• Ensuring continued scalability and performance of the system as it grows
• Day-to-day maintenance and rapid-response support

The results

Cyclescheme became the fastest growing private company in the UK, with its Fast Track 100 profile citing the platforms created by Loft as a key ingredient in this success. Shortly after Loft supported the company through a sale to the Grass Roots Group, and we continue to work with the parent company to build the business.

“We have worked with Loft on several big web and platform development projects. Loft has a vision that can be documented and turned into a reality, and making things happen is a strength. I would recommend the company in this field.”

– Daniel Gillborn, Head of Commercial Operations