Your Comms Group Case Studies.

Corvia-Ticketer:  

Sometimes innovation and inspiration comes from the places you might think have the least opportunity to influence or change the way we think and act.

A little bit about Corvia-Ticketer

Back in 2008, contactless bank cards were in their infancy and even if you were an early adopter of the technology, the most you could spend by tapping your card was a tenner.

But for a generation that had grown up writing cheques, the notion that you could pay for something just by waving your debit card at a machine was a revelation.

The thought that one day you’d be able to use effectively the same method to take a bus ride would probably have been mind-blowing.

Luckily John Clarfelt, a former barrister and butcher, wasn’t the sort to be constrained by small thoughts, and so in 2008 he launched what would become Ticketer to revolutionise bus ticketing using the same cloud and network technology that was driving innovation in the banking sector.

And as the scope of what technology can do has exploded through what we now know as the Internet of Things (IoT), so Ticketer continues to innovate and create to make bus travel easier and more accessible.

In fact, the company’s business model and future ambition is now so great that the list of bus companies that have partnered with Ticketer to provide their ticketing solutions is growing by the day.

Alongside the behemoths of public transport that now use Ticketer’s cloud solution – First, Arriva and Uno among them – regional public bus companies from all points of the UK compass have been queueing up to streamline their own ticketing systems.

From Cornwall in the west to Ipswich in the East, the Isle of Man in the north to Brighton in the south – and leisure operators at dozens of locations in between – the success of Ticketer and its drive for innovation through the IoT has grown exponentially.

Not that the super-technology that differentiates Ticketer from its competitors can’t also sit alongside older generation transport – there are working horse trams in the UK that prove old world transport can also benefit from Ticketer’s new world technology.

We feel privileged indeed to have been there near the start of John’s journey to this point. We’ve now been working with Ticketer’s holding company, Corvia, for well over ten years and we’ve seen at first hand the growth that has justifiably propelled the company to this point.

The YCG Solution

When we started this journey with them, we were also a relatively small company but our parallel paths have seen us both thrive both in scale and support, to the point where we now provide Ticketer with 4,000 sims and another 3,000 on the way.

All of which helps to smooth the communications logistics that are involved in managing the company’s sales and operational activity across the UK.

As we head into a new era and a new dawn working in partnership with the whole team at Ticketer, we can look back at the last ten years and genuinely say they’re a company that has earned and deserves every moment of its success.

What came next?

Ticketer is now the UK’s most widely deployed smart ticketing systems supplier, and John and his team are now looking beyond our own borders at Electronic Ticketing Machine (ETM) opportunities that exist in Europe and the Americas.

The first step in Ticketer’s international journey was the acquisition of the Norwegian ticketing company FARA (an old Norse word for travel), which also has offices in Poland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

FARA uses the latest technology in ETMs, back office software and passenger facing apps, with a focus on providing Real Time Information (RTI) for use on board, online and on mobile to increase the convenience, appeal and use of public transport.

The expertise that has driven FARA’s innovation will now also help to drive Ticketer’s as it looks to expand its development capabilities and product portfolios in the UK and across the rest of Europe.

Our involvement with Ticketer is hardly as ground breaking as their journey has been, but we like to think the mobile solutions that we’ve provided to them over the years have helped to make the logistics of that journey easier.