CityRyde Saves $20,000 and Increases Client Satisfaction by Using Manymoon

At a Glance

• Collaborate with clients while keeping costs low
• Minimize IT and training costs so they can focus on their core business

• Used Manymoon online project management to complete RFPs with clients
• Used Manymoon to organize information that is shared between managers and employees

• Saved $20,000 in hardware, software and licensing costs
• Save 20 emails per employee per day
• Significantly increase customer satisfaction during RFPs and help close deals

CityRyde is the largest, most trusted and recognized global bike share consultancy who boast a team of credible leaders and subject matter experts well connected to key thought leaders in sustainable transportation worldwide. CityRyde has traveled the globe testing, analyzing, and comparing the most prominent bike sharing implementations. We’ve built strong relationships with key government officials, an array of prospective customers, multiple collegiate universities, numerous vendors and a variety of bike share providers to develop an expert understanding of the bike share implementation life-cycle. CityRyde recently launched its revolutionary software named Spark which is the first off-the-shelf software solution to manage bike sharing systems. CityRyde is also developing a software package codenamed Oyster that will revolutionize the sustainable transportation industry by turning bike share rides into cash. CityRyde won the FastPitch! 2008 "Top Green Business" of the year award, was awarded the "Bicycle Friendly Business" award by the League of American Bicyclists and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, US News and World Reports, and Fast Company amongst others.

Manymoon is a leading project collaboration application built specifically for customers who utilize secure online tools such as Google Apps. Manymoon makes it simple to organize tasks, documents, events, and links with coworkers, customers, and partners. By seamlessly integrating with Google Apps, Manymoon helps organize and track projects so that anyone can efficiently collaborate and reduce email clutter. Manymoon is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and is proud to help thousands of businesses simplify their worklife.

Before switching to Manymoon and Google Apps, CityRyde was using a combination of packaged server software for project management, document management, collaboration, email and calendaring. It was was extremely time consuming to maintain these system - more than 10 hours per week. It was also very difficult to allow customers and remote employees access to the managed projects as they needed special desktop software and licenses. Customers and stakeholders were not going to purchase or install special software to collaborate with CityRyde. All this made managing projects difficult because employees had to continually update customers on the status of various work items. This led to restricting access to essential employees which in turn led to lower productivity.

CityRyde needed a solution that was made for a start-up business with a handful of close-knit employees that would require little or no IT hours spent managing the system(s).

They also manage a large number of Requests for Proposals (RFP) for municipality bike sharing systems. This requires close collaboration with clients, municipality employees, internal employees and consultants. A system was needed that would be simple for all of these people involved to just pickup and use.

CityRyde first moved to Google Apps first because of the multitude of issues with their existing email system. They were starting to grow rapidly and the software licensing and the time spent managing the system was preventing the management team from growing the business. Google Apps was perfect for their business because it required very little maintenance from an administrator, it worked across all types of platforms (CityRyde can now allow employees to use any equipment they want now) and required no additional software purchases. E-mail management is top notch, searching of e-mail is made so easy and integration with a variety of mobile phones were very attractive (previously employees had to use Windows Mobile Devices, now they can use Blackberrys, Windows Mobile and iPhones). Google Apps even allowed employees who were attached to legacy email systems to use it as they are used to.

The switch to Google Apps was a success. There was very little user training and when new features are available, they do not have to install it on everyone's PC or on a server.

After moving to Google Apps and realizing the productivity gains, CityRyde started looking at moving other business critical applications into the cloud. They did a significant amount of research and testing and found Manymoon to be the best product to meet their needs. The seamless integration with Google Apps provided immediate value. After initially trying it out with a few employees they quickly realized how much easier it was to use then their former, server-based solution. Productivity skyrocketed because they were not wasting time on complicated processes, Manymoon just worked. After the initial trial stage CityRyde moved all of employees, clients and stakeholders to Manymoon with very little effort. The entire staff and customer base has been using Manymoon and customer satisfaction has dramatically improved. The combination is so easy to use that managing projects has become part of their daily process and not a chore.

Project management has been made so easy that it is something that CityRyde employees and clients want to use as they are not forced like they were previously. It's so simple to start using that essential team members have been able to focus on building the business and not on training or IT tasks.

Employees welcomed the change because it's so easy to use every day. Project management is not something that needs to policed anymore because everyone is just doing it naturally as part of their day-to-day work.

Customers are equally happy as well. The RFP process for the Boulder, Colorado bike sharing project has been completely managed in Manymoon and it could not be easier with the ability to attach documents and spreadsheets. CityRyde is going to use this project as a Manymoon project template for future RFPs.

CityRyde has saved time and money in a variety of ways with Manymoon:

• Manager - saved 20 hours per week managing tasks and emails with team members.
• IT - saved 570 hours per year in software maintenance work.
• Software costs - reduced by $20,000 since using Manymoon.