Challenge 

There’s something special about bridges that makes traversing them about more than just the crossing. For a moment you’re moving between two worlds. That’s especially true for the Øresund Bridge, which connects Denmark and Sweden and rose to fame as the central location of the hit TV series The Bridge.

The experience of crossing the bridge improved when tolling actors like Brobizz entered the market and enabled drivers to use express lanes. However, the platform used for handling customer data, passing data and payments was still a dated and monolithic ERP system. In addition, the self-service system used to eg. update or buy Brobizzes was also due for an overhaul.

Solution 

Netcompany was hired to modernise the tolling and self-service platform used by Sund & Bælt’s tolling brand Brobizz, which acts as a tolling service provider at the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, the Storebælt Bridge between Funen and Zealand, several ferries such as Molslinjen, Forsea, Fanølinjen, Bornholmslinje as well as the coming FehmarnBelt Tunnel between Denmark and Germany. Brobizz is a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Sund & Bælt Holding A/S.

»We worked on a three-stage solution. The first goal was to provide private customers using Brobizz’ self-service system with a more modern, user-friendly interface, and to give Sund & Bælt’s employees a more modern back-end system with the new tolling platform«, Anders Brammer says.

Aside from the already functioning license plate recognition system, which allows registered Brobizz customers to pay for bridge crossings automatically, the new self-service system, implemented in the summer of 2023, handles everything from APIs, tolling, invoicing, bank integration, and reminder processes.

The second step of the plan – released in the spring of 2024 – improves the self-service and tolling platforms for business customers using Brobizz, such as truck drivers and field service engineers. The third and last step makes it possible for Brobizz to pursue business opportunities not possible with the old IT system, such as supporting kilometre-based road tolling on Danish roads. That requires a modern platform able to handle large amounts of data such as the GPS location of a vehicle.

»Road tolling is a big potential new market which leads to a whole new group of customers. So far, a local truck driver who didn’t need to cross any of the bridges did not have any interactions with Brobizz, but with the new legislation they will become customers of Brobizz and the new IT system will be ready to support this as well as other new business opportunities for Sund & Bælt«, Anders Brammer says.

The solution has been based on Netcompany Billing, which already supports multiple toll service providers in Norway. By leveraging the right domain knowledge and the capabilities of Netcompany Billing, the project has been able to enable a high-volume billing system.

Results 

Netcompany’s massive platform transformation, moving Sund & Bælt away from their old, monolithic software system to a contemporary, cloud-first solution based on Netcompany Billing, integrated with Brobizz’s existing business applications and with an improved user interface, has already helped business and private customers.

»Over time we expect a decrease in the number of calls to customer service and late payments. Both will make a tremendous difference for the company, and we already see that the calls have changed in nature and are not about the usability of the self-service portals«, Anders Brammer says.

The new cloud-based tolling platform handles everything from payments and invoicing to bank integration and late payment processes, bettering the work lives of the employees as well as improving the customer journey. The tolling platform has automated several repetitive tasks that used to be done by hand, which was time-demanding and amounted to a significant cost for the company.

As for the future, the new Netcompany Billing-based platform helps Brobizz expand its market without also having to expand its customer service. It also allows them to build new tolling solutions for business customers that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

»The new platform doesn’t only support the current IT needs of Sund & Bælt. It also makes it possible for Sund & Bælt to become the company it wants to be in the future, and though that’s the most abstract part of the goal, it might also be the most important«, Anders Brammer says.