FREE NOW is a mobility service provider with the largest selection of vehicles in Europe. Available in 16 markets and 170+ cities, more than 56 million users are choosing from the wide range of mobility options using just one app. FREE NOW is the first mobility platform in Europe to reach Net-Zero - intending to create a sustainable, urban mobility experience in every European city.
FREE NOW is part of the mobility joint venture between BMW and Daimler, formed in February 2019. With total funding of $131.2M raised, the company’s majority shareholders are BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
In 2022, Christian von Rumohr, Director of FinTech Products, was looking to fill a Product Manager position in the I&P (Invoicing and Payout) team. The Product Manager was transitioning to a different team, and a new Product Manager for I&P was yet to be hired, leaving the position empty for a few months. Product People joined to replace the previous PM for April-July 2022 until the I&P team finds a permanent PM. The interim PM not only helped deliver various Q2 initiatives but also performed discovery for Q2 and Q3.
Context & Description
When Product People joined Free Now, Free Now was in the middle of building a new business model project in the UK. This project was part of a significant change in the UK market, The relationship with drivers is a central good of managing FREE NOW’s marketplace, thus it was important to build a product that drivers understand easily. We needed to learn legal, accounting, and finance nomenclature and concepts to correctly answer questions from stakeholders and the team and clearly understand the changes that would inevitably come as part of the delivery of the project.
What we did:
Context & Description
Free Now generated bank statements (bank transfer and direct debit for driver companies and B2B clients) in a format that needed further processing and/or converting in order to be used in different markets/geographies.
Primary objective: Prevent system Failure.
Plan quality checks, monitoring and regular check-up for the servers hosting the financial information.
Secondary Objectives: Conformity & Efficiency.
About Conformity, we planed regular compliance checks to update the system with the latest changes of the European standards for financial information storage.
When it comes to Efficiency, we reduced manual work and errors, thus speeding up the payout process.
What we did:
Phase 1 - Use an internal, self-sufficient backup method to assure continuous service for using the financial information
Phase 2 - Automate existing processes in key points, replacing manual intervention/processing
Context & Description
In alignment with the company's key result to “achieve Europe-wide recognition as the leading multi-mobility player,” we were part of a project to migrate the Greek market to our financial platform to enable automation and improve our driver & passengers experience when referring to Invoicing and payouts flexibility.
We performed discovery to build a smooth platform migration to ensure accuracy, timeliness & automated processes regarding invoicing & payouts in the Greek market.
Alongside the Director of Product, we had to:
While Product People’s interim PM successfully led the mission, Free Now has found a new permanent PM with highly fitting experience and skillset.
The interim PM welcomed him with a ‘Handover Document’ on his first day. The thoughtfully crafted 11-page document contained all the valuable information to help the new PM get started and up to speed immediately:
Product People also prepared for the PM onboarding sessions over 4 weeks. By having multiple weekly sessions, Product People ensured the new PM had quality “crash courses” in addition to ample Q&A sessions. With the help of these sessions, the new PM could onboard the complex projects of the team at an impressive pace. Product People not only orchestrated the ongoing projects smoothly during the absence of a PM in the team but also set the new PM up for a great start!
💡 Ran very complex day-to-day BAU operations with stakeholders and the team, prioritizing based on business urgency and effort while keeping the team focused on the delivery of essential topics.
💡 Ran delivery process of a very important change of business model in the UK, resulting in a substantial increase in unit revenue.
💡 Performed discovery into topics important for the Fintech team and handed them over to the new incoming PM hire.
💡 Successfully onboarded a new PM hire to take over the Invoicing and Payout team.
.svg){kind=small}
