“We are filling a gap in the fast growing mobility management market.”
23.10.2014
The idea behind routeRANK came to CEO Jochen Mundinger’s mind in 2006, after he had lost a whole afternoon on the Internet organizing a travel itinerary for a seminar in Poland. Today, the company counts numerous customers like the WWF, the TCS and the Swiss Confederation as well as worldwide leading travel management companies. All of them are using routeRANK’s smart multimodal solutions for travel planning. The EPFL spin-off recently announced the launch of a new commuter solution for travel and mobility managers, commuteRANK, in collaboration with the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV). We met Jochen to talk about the exciting news.
 CEO Jochen Mundinger is making people's lives easier thanks to smart travel planning and mobility solutions.
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 routeRANK is launching a new commuter solution for travel and mobility managers: commuteRANK.
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Congratulations for the great news. Can you briefly explain what commuteRANK is?
commuteRANK is an additional mobility interface to our multimodal routing engine allowing the analysis of large numbers of commuter trips in an automated manner. The system accurately calculates all relevant door-to-door route options by considering all means of transport such as rail, public transport, P+Rail and P+Ride, carpooling, private car, walking and biking, and their many combinations.
Seven years ago, you launched routeRANK on the market. What value is added by commuteRANK today?
Our multimodal route planner addresses the entire door-to-door route by considering rail, road and air connections as well as their many combinations. It ranks the best possible travel routes and allows users to sort them according to their priorities such as price, travel time and CO2 emissions. Users can compare and book their tickets directly with the travel providers, enabling them to save up to 35% in cost and 2½ hours in planning time. We cover Switzerland, Europe and North America, as well as much of the rest of the world. Our solution is used both in managed business travel, i.e. integrated with the relevant internal processes and tools, as well as in unmanaged business travel, i.e. typically by smaller companies or companies with less travel activity. With commuteRANK, we are adding a new tool for mobility departments and professionals for a new use case: commuters in addition to business travelers and visitors. Our existing travel offering is now part of a wider mobility offering.
How did the collaboration with the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) start?
CHUV’s mobility management department needed a powerful system to analyze the commute trips of its employees in order to attribute limited parking spaces around the hospital. Now, the system also analyses support measures, i.e. an employer’s contribution to an e-bike, a travelcard or a P+Rail pass. It can further help with strategic decisions such as the comparison of multiple sites for a new building premise according to their impact on commuter mobility.
Mobility management is a growing trend in Switzerland…
This industry is still relatively young and is mostly based on consulting activities. Companies’ and institutions’ mobility problems are becoming ever more important. However, mobility managers still lack IT solutions helping them with the different issues involved and the decisions to take. This is where routeRANK comes in. We are filling a gap in the fast growing mobility management market.
Your mobility solutions offer other significant benefits to companies and organizations. What are they?
We provide different solutions and the benefits depend on the products and their use cases. For example, the travel planning solutions help travelers and their company to save time and money, reduce their carbon footprint and gain productivity. The visitor solutions provide a similar service and similar benefits. The commuter solutions help with the attributions of parking spaces or with the identification and analysis of suitable support measures.
You were recently granted a patent in the US.
This patent concerns the personalized real-time location-based travel management method for multimodal travel. We are very pleased that our technology has now also been recognized in this way.
Sustainability has been behind your philosophy for the past eight years. In your opinion, how big is it outside Switzerland today, i.e. in the US?
It is increasingly relevant, directly and also indirectly. For example, if business travelers care about productivity and leisure travelers about time to read a book, they might end up on a train instead of driving for those reasons as well. Ultimately it is about multiple, different priorities and their trade-offs, which might even change between trips.
You have received the support of venture kick from the start. What have been the benefits of the program for your company?
A lot has happened in the Swiss startup scene over the last decade or so, not least thanks to venture kick and venturelab. I benefited from the venture leaders USA program in 2007 and routeRANK was a venture kick winner in 2007/2008. Both have proven extremely valuable in the development of the company.
commuteRANK is an additional mobility interface to our multimodal routing engine allowing the analysis of large numbers of commuter trips in an automated manner. The system accurately calculates all relevant door-to-door route options by considering all means of transport such as rail, public transport, P+Rail and P+Ride, carpooling, private car, walking and biking, and their many combinations.
Seven years ago, you launched routeRANK on the market. What value is added by commuteRANK today?
Our multimodal route planner addresses the entire door-to-door route by considering rail, road and air connections as well as their many combinations. It ranks the best possible travel routes and allows users to sort them according to their priorities such as price, travel time and CO2 emissions. Users can compare and book their tickets directly with the travel providers, enabling them to save up to 35% in cost and 2½ hours in planning time. We cover Switzerland, Europe and North America, as well as much of the rest of the world. Our solution is used both in managed business travel, i.e. integrated with the relevant internal processes and tools, as well as in unmanaged business travel, i.e. typically by smaller companies or companies with less travel activity. With commuteRANK, we are adding a new tool for mobility departments and professionals for a new use case: commuters in addition to business travelers and visitors. Our existing travel offering is now part of a wider mobility offering.
How did the collaboration with the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) start?
CHUV’s mobility management department needed a powerful system to analyze the commute trips of its employees in order to attribute limited parking spaces around the hospital. Now, the system also analyses support measures, i.e. an employer’s contribution to an e-bike, a travelcard or a P+Rail pass. It can further help with strategic decisions such as the comparison of multiple sites for a new building premise according to their impact on commuter mobility.
Mobility management is a growing trend in Switzerland…
This industry is still relatively young and is mostly based on consulting activities. Companies’ and institutions’ mobility problems are becoming ever more important. However, mobility managers still lack IT solutions helping them with the different issues involved and the decisions to take. This is where routeRANK comes in. We are filling a gap in the fast growing mobility management market.
Your mobility solutions offer other significant benefits to companies and organizations. What are they?
We provide different solutions and the benefits depend on the products and their use cases. For example, the travel planning solutions help travelers and their company to save time and money, reduce their carbon footprint and gain productivity. The visitor solutions provide a similar service and similar benefits. The commuter solutions help with the attributions of parking spaces or with the identification and analysis of suitable support measures.
You were recently granted a patent in the US.
This patent concerns the personalized real-time location-based travel management method for multimodal travel. We are very pleased that our technology has now also been recognized in this way.
Sustainability has been behind your philosophy for the past eight years. In your opinion, how big is it outside Switzerland today, i.e. in the US?
It is increasingly relevant, directly and also indirectly. For example, if business travelers care about productivity and leisure travelers about time to read a book, they might end up on a train instead of driving for those reasons as well. Ultimately it is about multiple, different priorities and their trade-offs, which might even change between trips.
You have received the support of venture kick from the start. What have been the benefits of the program for your company?
A lot has happened in the Swiss startup scene over the last decade or so, not least thanks to venture kick and venturelab. I benefited from the venture leaders USA program in 2007 and routeRANK was a venture kick winner in 2007/2008. Both have proven extremely valuable in the development of the company.