CheckMyBus Case Report

Translation of the Microsoft „Case Report CheckMyBus“, published on microsoft.com

In the year 2013 a 75-year-old monopoly in Germany ended. While in many countries in Europe the intercity bus is an economical alternative to private automobile or railroad travel, in Germany the dominant position of the German Railway was cemented by the Passenger Transportation Act. For this reason, except for busses to and from Berlin, there were hardly any intercity busses between German cities. With the liberalization of the intercity bus transport, in 2013 many new bus lines and providers started. Heinz Raufer, Torsten Sturm and Reinhard Wick, the founders of hotel.de, recognized early on the optimism in the new intercity bus market.

The rapidly developing offer diversity demanded a means of comparison for consumers. "A great deal of the extremely dynamic start of the intercity bus market in Germany reminded us of the origins of the online hotel reservation systems about twelve years ago", said CheckMyBus co-founder Heinz Raufer. A touristic market opened up with previously untapped potential and high customer value in connection with the online search: The founder trio developed the idea for a meta search engine as a intercity bus portal to compare prices, departure and arrival times, availability, bus features, and such (e.g. transport of bicycles). "It was clear to us that the tempo of the market penetration was decisive for the success of the idea", said Torsten Sturm, co-founder and project manager at CheckMyBus. The web portal had to be realized quickly. At this juncture the Cloud-specialist and software developer Noxum GmbH entered the fray. "Noxum with its experience in Cloud Computing, its technology for product information management (PIM), as well as content management systems, fulfilled our idea exactly." [...]

Torsten Sturm, Reinhard Wick, Dr. Heinz Raufer

www.CheckMyBus.de