Case Study - Motability

Motability

Delivers fast, revenue-driving, ‘bomb-proof’ B2B and D2C buying experiences with Elastic Path.

Industry

Automotive

Use Case

B2B Replatform, D2C Replatform

Business impact, by the numbers

1 sec

For one customer to purchase two cars

£4 bil

Transactions per year

95%

Purchase conversion rate

We work in a fast-paced market, and requirements change and evolve all the time. You need solutions that are flexible. We sell 200,000 to 250,000 vehicles per year, and they cost on average £15,000 pounds. We were looking for a really robust, really stable platform. Elastic Path is bomb-proof – it gives us confidence that it will work day-in and day-out during peak periods when we’re selling hundreds of cars in minutes.
Craig Ford Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions

Who They Are

Motability is a car leasing company in the U.K. that provides affordable, worry-free motoring solutions for disabled people.

In the U.K., disabled people, their families, and their caretakers are provided a government-funded mobility allowance. Motability buys cars, leases them to customers who qualify for the mobility allowance, and at the end of the lease sells the cars to dealer customers. Profits from the car sales to dealer customers are channeled back into Motability to ensure low-cost leases for mobility allowance customers.

A unique business model and commerce needs

Craig Ford, Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions at Motability Operations, says that the company’s commerce needs are unique and demanding for different reasons:

We sell hundreds of thousands of vehicles every year. Every car coming off the Motability Scheme flows through mfldirect, our e-commerce platform. We move volume at pace — some at fixed price, others through our auction channel — but all of it through one unified, high-performing sales engine.
Our pricing model is built around speed. Think ticket releases: we drop cars twice a day, and that creates intense surge moments where dealers pile in. It’s not unusual to see 50 to 100 dealers chasing the same registration at the same time. That level of demand is great for sales, but it means the platform has to be rock-solid during those peaks — no wobble, no lag, just performance.
Importance of certainty: mfldirect has to be reliable and fast. The main purchase model is fixed-price, so conversion is what increases revenue. As Craig says, “speed drives conversion, and conversion drives revenue.” Customers have to know within seconds whether they have secured the car they are attempting to buy.

The complexity comes in the shape of absolute simplicity. We have one of the fastest and most seamless user experiences that you can deliver. It’s all about speed. It’s very much click, click, and you have the car. We’ve been able to customize Elastic Path’s architecture – especially websockets – to deliver real-time updates and ultra speed to our customers.
Craig Ford Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions

A ‘bomb-proof,’ revenue maximizing Elastic Path solution

Motability Operations’ business model requires an automotive remarketing engine targeted at B2B dealer customers that drives sales and revenue. Since 2010, they have used Elastic Path to make that happen. Craig says that by using Elastic Path Self-Managed Commerce, they have:

Guaranteed an amazing commerce experience for both D2C and B2B customers
Created a rapid purchasing experience that maximizes revenue for every car sold to dealer customers, and ensures the long-term sustainability of the Motability Scheme

To grow its remarketing capabilities, Motability Operations has adopted a composable commerce approach with Elastic Path.

At the center of the commerce solution is Elastic Path – which Craig refers to as the brand’s “eCommerce engine.” A leading vendor within that solution is Contentful, a content management system they customize to deliver targeted content to specific dealers through segmentation.

As an eCommerce engine, Elastic Path provides us flexibility. A composable commerce solution gave us the flexibility to work with different components – a pricing engine, an inventory management, and everything else. Elastic Path is the underlying technology driving a rapid purchasing experience that allows us to maximize the revenue that we get for every car.
Craig Ford Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions

Essential to the composable solution is having the flexibility to customize commerce components, including:

Pricing, to adjust to the regulated nature of the U.K. automotive industry and ensures maximized revenue

Payments, to offer dealer customers the ability to pay through direct debit linked to a line of credit without needing a cart or payment landing page that would slow down transactions

Inventory management, to ensure accurate, rapidly-updating data, even during peak transaction points

Logistics, to directly integrate with logistics providers across the U.K. so that dealer customers get the cars they purchase without undue delay

The result of this solution – powered by Elastic Path, and using a mix of best-of-breed vendors and specialty-customized components – is a lightning-fast commerce experience that Craig calls “bomb-proof.”

Just consider how mfldirect has evolved:

They wanted to be quicker than any other car buying experience. It’s come true. mfldirect dealer customers can buy a car in just two clicks. The site is so fast that a dealer recently bought two cars in only one second. On other sites, the online car buying process involves many clicks, multiple page loads, and minutes or even hours to get confirmation.

mfldirect needed to transact billions of pounds of car sales per year, and now it does: £4 billion in transactions per year, with stable, quick transactions even during peak purchase periods.

The solution requires high conversion rates to drive revenue. With a conversion rate that averages over 95%, mfldirect is leading its industry and surpassing revenue goals.

Everything we do, every change we make to improve the website and our commerce experience is driven by data and absolutely borne out of customer requirements.
Craig Ford Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions

mfldirect is getting better over time. The technical stability and speed of the solution means that the company’s business team is able to evaluate quantitative and qualitative data about buyers’ experiences and behavior. The result is iterative improvements to the customer experience – for example, an instant, automated email confirming vehicle purchase – that increases the dealers trust in  mfldirect, and leads to sustained, repeat business.

“Reliability is a big part of the experience, particularly if you’re going to buy things quickly and you’re buying high value things,” Craig says of mfldirect customers. “You want confirmation that you’ve secured that item and that when you hit ‘buy,’ the car is yours.”

Vision for future commerce success

Even with an industry-leading buying experience, the mfldirect team has ambitions for greater commerce success. In particular, they want to offer B2B dealer customers a buying experience that is perfectly-tailored to their needs.

Craig says that the ongoing commerce focus is to offer the right dealer customer the right cars at the right price at the right time. It wants to help these dealers increase their margins – and position mfldirect as the number one used car supplier in the U.K.

Purchasing used cars is hard work. I want us to be able to provide an experience to dealer customers that is second to none. We want to provide a buying experience that not only works seamlessly but provides perfectly recommended vehicles to dealer customers that match their business needs and gives them a platform to start and end their car buying journey. We want dealers to see us as a trusted partner and their number one supplier.
Craig Ford Head of Sales, Marketing and Digital Solutions

To accomplish this ambition, Motability is once again turning to Elastic Path. For starters, Craig says that Motability is currently evaluating Elastic Path’s various payments integrations, and particularly payment offerings that would allow Motability to expand beyond processing exclusively through direct debit or a line of credit.

Motability is also working to expand its offerings to dealer customers beyond cars and into other automotive services. Craig says that as Motability offers more products and inventory, it plans to use Elastic Path’s B2B commerce solutions to turbocharge sales and customer experience.