The bm|t par­tic­i­pates in PAULfaehrtBus.de, a prod­uct of Mag­ni­tude Inter­net GmbH, via the Thuringian Start-up Fund (TSF).

“We will tear down the exist­ing hur­dles in occa­sional trans­port,” says the devel­op­ers of PAULfaehrtBus.de. “Occa­sional or char­ter trans­port is pre­cisely the area that every bus oper­a­tor has con­trol over in terms of sales and can there­fore also decide for them­selves how their com­pany grows,” adds Dirk Paasche, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Mag­ni­tude Inter­net GmbH.
In con­trast to local pub­lic trans­port and reg­u­lar ser­vices, bus oper­a­tors can act them­selves in occa­sional trans­port — i.e. hir­ing buses for indi­vid­ual trips, excur­sions or school trips — and set their own rules. But unfor­tu­nately, to this day, this area remains more of a casual busi­ness for most com­pa­nies. The hur­dles to talk­ing directly to cus­tomers are great, inter­me­di­aries dom­i­nate the indus­try and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion leaves this busi­ness sec­tor weak due to a lack of products.
The mar­ket is dom­i­nated by travel agents, who have con­tact with cus­tomers but mostly do not own their own buses. For this rea­son, there are broadly spread enquiries to com­pet­ing bus com­pa­nies on a daily basis, which leads to an enor­mous per­son­nel effort for the prepa­ra­tion of offers, but hardly to suc­cess­ful busi­ness deals for the bus companies.

What exactly does PAULfaehrtBus.de do?

PAULfaehrtBus.de pro­vides bus com­pa­nies with tools to influ­ence their own suc­cess again and, above all, to struc­ture and organ­ise it. An enquiry and book­ing sys­tem inte­grated on the bus company’s web­site enables end cus­tomers to directly enquire about offers with imme­di­ate book­ing and pay­ment options. By means of intel­li­gent rules and cal­cu­la­tion rou­tines, each bus oper­a­tor sets its own con­di­tions, on the basis of which PAULfaehrtBus.de can act com­pletely autonomously. The processes run­ning in the back­ground reduce the time required for offers by up to 99%, fil­ter out “fake enquiries” and deliver cus­tomer enquiries directly to the bus com­pa­nies in future.
This means that every searcher receives an answer imme­di­ately with­out any loss of time and can also book directly or pay con­ve­niently via all com­mon pay­ment meth­ods. The employ­ees who are thus relieved can finally take care of what they are sup­posed to do: the care of the “real” inter­ested par­ties and cus­tomers. The result is enor­mously higher clos­ing rates with extremely less effort for every­one involved. A win-win sit­u­a­tion, so to speak, for buy­ers and sell­ers. Thanks to the inte­grated cus­tomer man­age­ment for bus com­pa­nies, all enquiries are retained, can be viewed and eval­u­ated at any time and can be used for fur­ther mar­ket­ing campaigns.
To make this really work, PAULfaehrtBus.de also mod­ernises the inter­net pres­ence of bus com­pa­nies so that enquiries can also be made very eas­ily via mobile devices such as smart­phones and tablets.
Now, one might think that the advan­tages described are in them­selves a great step for­ward for every bus oper­a­tor. But Dirk Paasche adds with a smile: “We are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the bus indus­try and there­fore we offer another very impor­tant advan­tage for every­one. We net­work the entire bus indus­try with each other and make coop­er­a­tion child’s play. Via the cloud, every­one is con­nected who pre­vi­ously planned and han­dled joint projects by phone or e‑mail. Only with the small but sub­tle dif­fer­ence that they can now all syn­chro­nise and dis­trib­ute their resources with each other in real time.”
Con­clu­sion: The prod­uct of Mag­ni­tude Inter­net GmbH PAULfaehrtBus.de is ready for use and has been exten­sively tested. It can reduce the effort for every bus com­pany in occa­sional trans­port, increase the clos­ing rate and avoid wait­ing for offers for enquir­ers. A real added value for sell­ers and buy­ers. The costs for a licence are sur­pris­ingly low and thus a pos­si­ble option even for small providers to gain momen­tum in the occa­sional trans­port market.
It is the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in occa­sional traffic.

How was Magnitude Internet GmbH able to convince the investors?

The founders know how to suc­cess­fully estab­lish soft­ware on the mar­ket due to their many years of activ­ity in the IT mar­ket. Through close ties to the bus indus­try, they know exactly which solu­tions are being sought and where com­peti­tors are cur­rently stand­ing. The fin­ished soft­ware can be mar­keted directly and cur­rently has no com­pe­ti­tion worth mentioning.

About Magnitude Internet GmbH

Mag­ni­tude Inter­net GmbH was founded in Decem­ber 2014 and spe­cialises in the devel­op­ment of intel­li­gent soft­ware for bus com­pa­nies. Over the last few years, the team has devel­oped and exten­sively mar­ket tested the PAULfaehrtBus.de soft­ware, which has been described as a rev­o­lu­tion in the bus indus­try. The prod­uct was offi­cially pre­sented to the pub­lic in July 2017 at the RDA Group Travel Expo in Cologne.

About bm|t

The bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh, based in Erfurt, is a sub­sidiary of the Thüringer Auf­baubank and the lead­ing address for invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages eight funds with a total vol­ume of around EUR 320 mil­lion, which invest in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — both in the start-up and growth phases or in com­pany suc­ces­sion sit­u­a­tions. Cur­rently, around EUR 100 mil­lion is avail­able for early-stage projects, for growth com­pa­nies and for estab­lished medium-sized and large com­pa­nies in Thuringia’s SME sector.