Scaling Europe's Largest Electric Car Subscription Service

The client

About Onto

Onto wanted to enhance its digital capability, but first it needed to scale its tech teams and transform their ways of working.

Onto is Europe’s largest electric car subscription service with over 7,000 cars in its fleet, also making it the largest electric car fleet in the UK. Onto has 25 different electric cars available on a monthly subscription, including models from Renault, Peugeot, Volkswagen, Audi and Tesla, and many more. Its all-inclusive subscription provides a flexible alternative to traditional leasing, which covers insurance, breakdown cover, and even public electric charging.

Since Onto was founded in 2018 it has experienced significant growth, most recently growing revenue by 300% in 2022. The business was recognised by Deloitte as the fourth fastest growing UK tech business in its Fast 50 list, and earlier this year ranked in ninth place across Europe in the Financial Times FT1000.

With ever-growing demand for electric car subscriptions and ambitions to grow the fleet size even larger, Onto continually looks for ways to efficiently and sustainably scale their operations, which are built on enabling cloud technologies from AWS.

With a team of just 10 engineers, one product manager and a designer, Onto needed to expand its tech team further and evolve its ways of working to build a sustainable approach to delivery that could support its growth ambitions.

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Key Outcomes

Over two years working with an Onto tech team, we helped bring about lasting cultural change and gave Onto a scaled and effective digital capability.

Productivity

Through upskilling and cultural change, Onto's tech teams continuously improve their product, delivery, and agile ways of working while leveraging Whole Brain Thinking.

Delivery & Accountability

Our partnership resulted in teams delivering regularly on quarterly roadmaps and OKRs, while improving leadership effectiveness and engagement scores.

Collaboration

We accelerated the design and delivery of Cloud and data platforms, leading to better cohesion and demand for upskilling across Product, Tech, and Business teams.

The Challenge

Transforming Ways of Working

Overcoming Start-up Culture Mindset to Deliver Critical Digital Services

Onto’s team was working at maximum capacity delivering critical day-to-day digital services across the business, so there was little bandwidth to analyse and refine its ways of working. The individuals within the team were used to operating as individuals as is often central to start-up culture and mindset.

Onto wanted to increase delivery momentum and needed external help to define what ‘good’ looked like and identify where to start in making changes.

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Our Journey with Onto

Scaling Capacity

We helped to expand, evolve and coach its technology teams and leadership, whilst also guiding Onto’s business stakeholders through agile concepts and the benefits they could bring to the wider business. Reducing silos and building up shared-understanding between Business and Technology is central to improving collaboration, pace and quality.

Implementing Agile

We coached teams on agile ways of working and helped setup three initial scrum teams. We created a more product-centric approach to development while equipping them with the skills to deal with ambiguity and challenges in delivery, technology, and stakeholder engagement.

Developing High Performance Teams

A lot of our focus at Onto was on the human skills, EQ and collaboration culture that makes high performing teams tick. New team charters, clearer roles and responsibilities, and a regular cadence of offsites (focusing on leadership, high performance skills and communication) meant we were able to grow the teams in both size and performance.

Sustainable growth

As the complexity of Onto’s roadmaps evolved and dependencies increased; we helped implement scaled practices and move into six scrum teams. We guided the teams through this growth and helped them cherry-pick the appropriate scaling ways of working for their context.

Pairing & Coaching

Working closely with our peers in Onto’s scrum teams we showcased best practice through day-to-day scrum events and product practices. We paired AND Digital with Onto team members in each discipline and involved our own specialists in coaching across Product, Engineering and Architecture.

Training

We helped generate cross-team, cross-department engagement through increased understanding of each other’s working patterns and needs. We provided both HBDI and Scrum training for Onto’s Fleet, Marketing, Finance, and C-Suite divisions. This reduced friction, improved collaboration and communication, in order to increase speed to market with new product launches.

Hiring & Talent Pathways

We helped set Onto on a path to hiring success by taking part in interviews. We shared our best practices in relation to competency frameworks and team playbooks. By the time our near-two-year project was complete in January 2023, we had actively helped Onto hire our replacements, ultimately locking in in-house capability for the future.

Cultural Change

Design and delivery of cloud and data platforms were accelerated by on-the-ground pairing and upskilling on the ground. Cultural change also led to better cohesion between Product, Tech and Business teams and a fresh approach to Diversity and Inclusion.

Evolving Leadership

As Onto’s team grew in scale and capability, so Onto’s leadership needed support to evolve their own roles and responsibilities. With our help, Onto’s leaders became able to create an environment in which product-focused scrum teams could thrive. They also led by example by utilising agile practices in their leadership team, such as retrospectives, visualisation of initiatives and a leadership team charter.

CTO at Onto

Ben Brown

"AND Digital has been an exceptional partner in our digital transformation journey. Their team's expertise and dedication to our success have been invaluable. Their ability to bring about lasting cultural change and build effective digital capabilities within our team has truly set us up for success."

The Result

Lasting, cultural change

Scaled and effective digital capability

Over two years working with an Onto tech team, we helped bring about lasting cultural change and gave Onto a scaled and effective digital capability. As a result of our partnership, Onto now has:

Continuous improvement

Teams that continuously improve on their product, delivery and agile ways of working, and that are better able to use their Whole Brain Thinking preferences in their scrum events and teamwork

Delivery at pace

Design and delivery of cloud and data platforms were accelerated by on-the-ground pairing and upskilling on the ground. With teams that regularly deliver on quarterly roadmaps and OKRs

Effective Leadership

Increased effectiveness of the Tech Leadership team, leading to clearer and greater accountability, and improved engagement scores throughout the teams

Greater collaboration

Better cohesion between Product, Tech and Business teams with demand emerging across the business for upskilling

Case studies

See our impact elsewhere

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Scaling Europe's Largest Electric Car Subscription Service with AND Digital

About Onto