A Groundbreaking Multi-Vendor Marketplace for Cycle-to-Work

Devstars bespoke applications are built for a very specific purpose each time. Taking a targeted approach allows the final code and tech stack to be very focused on delivery lean, fast loading, secure and very affordable products.

Efficient coding runs much smoother on servers and is less prone to outages. 

Dash Rides, like any good business, have ambitious roadmaps and rely on their development partners to avoid scaling and delivery issues at every step of their growth.

It does help that Dash are a very technical client, who have previously worked in product planning and delivery at Jaguar Motors. 

The first port of call for most clients is the link Dash sends them to start to set up their company. We have tweaked the process with David and his team many times, as with every site, it is vital to measure the performance of each page and adjust where improvements are uncovered

A progress visual has been key to allow new users to understand if they have any outstanding tasks.

Standardise Data

We allow larger companies to add members via a bulk importer which is never a simple task, most companies store their employee data in a myriad of systems, which get exported into even more spreadsheet formats. A solution was found with the FlatFile app which allows the importer to map sheets and CSVs to the fields needed in our database. Devstars are often asked to help research solutions and skilled developers who fully test each option, until a correct solution can be found.

Minimise Friction

We deployed some well trusted onboarding tools  to help keep friction points to a minimum. We often use Loqate for address lookups and married this with a great new tool to lookup UK company details via the UK Government’s own API. It is encouraging that standardisation of business critical data is being handled at the government level. It is vital that all businesses share the same structured data to push new platforms quickly into market.

Tried and trusted first

For both sides of the financial onboarding process we needed to lean towards B2B solutions, which make it simpler for companies to manage invoicing. We found GoCardless to be very useful. Choosing long term 3rd party solutions is as important to the platform as building efficient, scalable code. Should a chosen solution fail to work, or be constantly changing API endpoints and webhooks, it would make supporting the platform much harder and more costly for the client. Only select start-up providers if there are no other established players in the industry, unless of course, the start-up solution is the only provider disrupting the market.

Fully understand the product

The bulk of our time in building this project has been supplying rock-solid payroll and contract creation solutions. Our CTO now has a vast knowledge of UK and Scottish HMRC rules and calculations! We needed to make sure that every time the client’s HR Department exported the payroll figures for the current month, we had correctly calculated the  deductibles.  For every new employee, we created downloadable and signable PDFs on the fly, these are taken from Word templates that allow Dash to update when needed.

Even given the incentive of 20-30% off your new bike and accessories, it is still necessary to keep friction points down to a minimum!

The employee process has evolved from a simple selecting of one bike that you wanted to start your contract with, to a full blown store with ecommerce style checkout.

We applied all the best practices for lookups and also included progress pages to see what stage the employee’s application was

The latest update to the platform has been the introduction of a large Storefront for employees to choose from a wide range of bikes, clothing and accessories. All these items are now available via the cycle to work scheme but Dash have been the first company to make this process trouble free and at scale. They have even managed to allow for Bike Share rentals to be included, there really isn’t any cycle related item you cannot get via Dash Rides!

We can only go on how proud our client’s are of the work we produce by their posts and reactions in their business profiles.