Validation, lowcode development, and go-to-market for a brand new NAF membership for bicyclists.
Norges Automobil-Forbund has been helping Norwegian motorists for almost 100 years and is one of the country's strongest brands — all of Norway knows the road help, the road book in the glove box and the workshops of NAF.
But the way we move is changing. Private car ownership is no longer a matter of course, and many Norwegians opt out of the car altogether in favour of other means of transport in everyday life. In 2017, NAF therefore decided to change its purpose clause, moving from being a motorist organisation to becoming a road user organisation.
To live up to this change of purpose, NAF wanted to provide valuable services to more road users than those who drive a car. The first outlet of this is called NAF Bicycle, and we at Braver got to help develop it.
In autumn 2020, work began on understanding what NAF Bicycle could become. A business developer from NAF and two people from Braver actively worked with customer insights to understand the needs of Norwegian cyclists and how NAF can help make cycling life a few notches better.
“Why do you ride a bike? What annoys you about life as a cyclist? How much time, money and energy do you spend on a bike today?”
The questions were many, and the answers as well. After a few months of customer interviews, insights, hypothesis testing, lots of road trips and lots of learning, the NAF Bike concept finally began to take shape. We saw the outlines of a brand new NAF membership for anyone travelling on two wheels.
Soon after the start of the project, COVID-19 struck. That means the entire NAF Bike was practically developed digitally and distributed, using digital whiteboards, video meetings and digital tools. Fortunately, this was a way of working that we were used to from before, and probably COVID led to the project being driven forward with higher rather than lower efficiency than normal. After 12 months of working at NAF Bicycle, we had never actually met the decision maker who hired us physically a single time!
In order to get to the market as quickly as possible with a well-functioning membership, we chose to build the technical solution for NAF Bicycle on Bubble.io, a so-called “low code platform”. Bubble and similar platforms act as Lego bricks when developing digital products and services. They allow you to build technical solutions 10x faster than if one were to code the solution from scratch with traditional programming. In the early stages of an innovation project, you have to save time and costs where you can, and low code is absolutely fantastic in that respect.
NAF Cykel is a NAF membership for cyclists in Norway. Just like the NAF car membership, the bike membership includes several membership benefits that make everyday life easier for you as a cyclist. Some of these include an FG-approved bicycle register, roadside assistance for bicycles in case of mishap, theft insurance and member discounts.
Membership is located at cycle.naf.no, where one can become a customer, as well as log in and manage their membership, add bicycles to the bicycle register, mark a bike as stolen, transfer ownership of a bicycle, purchase additional services and the like.
At the time of writing (January 2023), NAF Bicycle has reached the 10,000 paying customers milestone. Braver still has the mission to project, develop and not least promote and grow the number of members in NAF Bicycle.
Braver has assisted with a full product development team to NAF Bicycle, working closely with NAF's in-house business developer from day one. That means we have contributed insights, strategy, concept development, business modeling, prototyping, design, programming and technical product development, customer service, marketing and sales.
This assignment is a crowning example of our preferred way of working. In practice, we have treated NAF Cykel as if it were our own start-up company, and were able to take responsibility for results and ownership of all parts of the project since the very beginning.
By placing NAF Bicycle outside the organisation's core business, NAF has enabled the project to move rapidly forward at its own pace. Experience-wise, this is the right way to organize innovation projects; place it outside the core during the development phase, and consider whether it should be moved in after the concept is validated, developed and operationally operational.
It has been very exciting to work with NAF Bicycle so far, and we look forward to the continuation, membership growth and further development of the membership. We extend a huge thank you to NAF for their trust.
"Braver vet å sette fart og løse problemer, alltid med et smil om munnen! En dyktig og inspirerende gjeng jeg har lært masse av å jobbe sammen med."
Book a call with Christer, or phone him on +47 400 52 503
