Making day-to-day transportation personalized and effortless
THE SWING leverages Databricks to deliver dependable smart mobility solutions
Less time spent analyzing data
Reduction in business operating costs
Increase in revenue through the analysis of custom data
THE SWING, Korea’s leading personal mobility provider, is driving innovation with products like bicycles, e-bikes, electric kickboards and scooters. Serving over 4 million users with 120,000 vehicles, they continue to expand with offerings like the bike subscription service Swap, the premium electric bicycle Voltaire, and the Swing Taxi service. However, their legacy data systems struggled to keep pace with their growing fleet, frequent vehicle relocations and new services, driving up costs and affecting service quality. By adopting Databricks, THE SWING revolutionized operations with enhanced fleet management, IoT optimization and robust data governance. AI-driven insights now power smarter vehicle location analysis and relocation, boosting customer satisfaction and achieving a 20% revenue increase through improved data-driven decisions.
Tackling inefficient data analytics and migration challenges
In the fast-paced personal mobility industry, real-time vehicle tracking and tailored user services are essential. For large-scale mobility sharing platforms, balancing supply and demand through systematic data analysis and AI-powered recommendations ensures customers can access transportation promptly.
However, THE SWING faced significant hurdles with their legacy system. Their use of BigQuery, a heterogeneous cloud platform, struggled to scale alongside the company’s expanding fleet and diversified services. Due to unstructured data formats, data had to be extracted from Amazon Web Services (AWS), analyzed in BigQuery and then further processed. This multistep approach consumed excessive resources, increased costs and delayed critical decision-making.
The outdated system also limited access to data insights, creating bottlenecks in decision-making. “Our operations were compromised by an outdated system that couldn’t scale with our needs,” Seungkyun Heo, General Manager of Development at THE SWING, explained. Additionally, processing IoT log messages for real-time vehicle monitoring was cumbersome, impacting operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. To address these challenges, THE SWING adopted Databricks, future-proofing their business with an integrated, efficient data management system.
Enhancing data governance and operational efficiency
With Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, THE SWING implemented a unified environment that replaced their fragmented systems. This transformation streamlined data management and enabled teams to extract more value from their data. Analysts utilized Databricks SQL for structured data queries and reporting, while data scientists leveraged Databricks Notebooks for exploratory analysis and MLflow to manage ML models from experimentation to deployment.
AI/BI Genie added another layer of innovation, allowing teams to translate natural language questions into SQL queries, democratizing data access across the organization. Real-time IoT data processing via Apache Spark™ Streaming and Kafka enabled THE SWING to monitor vehicle statuses accurately and detect anomalies, such as unusual locations or potential misuse, in real time. Databricks’ support for multiple programming languages — Python, R, Java and Scala — fostered cross-team collaboration and positioned THE SWING as an agile, forward-thinking leader in the mobility market.
A pivotal enhancement was the adoption of Unity Catalog, which centralized data access controls and enabled granular permission assignments. This secured sensitive data access while ensuring compliance across offerings like personal mobility, bike sharing and taxi services. “Databricks has become an integral part of our strategy, giving us the agility to scale, analyze and govern our data smoothly and without incident,” Seungkyun noted.
Lowering costs and boosting revenue with Databricks Data Intelligence Platform
By unifying data analytics and AI processes with Databricks, THE SWING reduced data analysis time by 30% and eliminated labor-intensive conversion tasks. AI/BI Genie empowered nontechnical teams to analyze data using natural language, enhancing data accessibility across the organization and contributing to a 40% reduction in operating costs.
“The implementation of Databricks has driven significant revenue growth,” Seungkyun said. “Now, our teams can analyze user data from their Swing mobility service and Swap bike subscription program for better decision-making.” THE SWING identified customer needs and launched integrated marketing strategies, increasing sales by 20%. The company anticipates a 70% reduction in IoT log processing time compared with their legacy system, further streamlining operations.
Looking ahead, THE SWING plans to develop real-time analytics systems to refine services like their taxi platform, optimizing supply and demand based on location data. Seungkyun concluded, “By collaborating with Databricks, THE SWING is poised to remain at the forefront of data-driven innovation, delivering enhanced mobility experiences to over 4 million users for years to come.”
