UrbanThings and Ipswich Buses: Providing a Passenger App with a Back Office Reporting System
The Story
Ipswich Buses has been helping get people around since 1903, and is owned by Ipswich Borough Council.
Operating 80 vehicles on a network of routes across the Borough of Ipswich, East Babergh, Colchester and the surrounding areas, Ipswich Buses are committed to giving passengers a quality bus service with a strong focus on customer service and innovation, and striving to reduce car dependency.
The Challenges
Ipswich Buses needed their own dedicated passenger app to facilitate journey planning and m-ticketing. They wanted a cost effective solution that would be easy to administer and update over a large fleet. They also encountered challenges regarding contactless and debit cards and needed a solution that would support major types of payments. Finally, they needed a solution that would integrate with their current ticketing hardware.
The Solution
UrbanThings worked with Ipswich Buses to provide a passenger app and cloud-based back office for use on their services. The app launched in November 2019 across the entire fleet.
The white-labelled app provides real-time travel information and m-ticketing via QR code validation. Passengers have a quick and simple method to purchase tickets on their smartphones, including period passes, which they can scan upon boarding to validate.
Through the cloud-based back office and mobility platform, Ipswich Buses can access invaluable data such as live passenger metrics, and detailed reporting to identify under and over-served routes.
UrbanThings continues to modernise the app with regular updates to bring new features and support new smartphones and operating system upgrades.
Features included
Dedicated Mobile App for Passengers:
- Real-time information
- Live vehicle tracking
- M-Ticketing
- Barcode-enabled mobile ticketing via integration with Ticketer ETMs
- Institutional Ticketing
Back Office Portal:
- Mobility Platform and back-office with passenger analytics
- Back end retail reports and export capability
- Fully managed SaaS solution
“Our company had been looking to develop and launch our own m-ticketing and journey planning app for some time. We are always looking for new ideas to attract and retain customers so having our own app was the next natural step after successfully launching contactless payments. It was important to Ipswich Buses that our app was white labelled and was not a generic product. UrbanThings have worked seamlessly with our own team to develop and launch the app”
— Steve Bryce, General Manager, Ipswich Buses
