Enabling a Groundbreaking Hotel Concept

With over 14bn EUR in AuM and almost 6 million sqm under management, NREP is looking to revolutionize real estate management. Working together with NREP, we created a comprehensive UX and IT architecture roadmap to build Noli Studios – a novel way of combining the comforts of home and the services of a hotel.

Today, the concept has been proven to work and Noli Studios has expanded to two additional locations.

“Working with Oivan has allowed us to focus on business innovation while they have distilled our ideas into a well-defined web-service and IT architecture. Oivan’s strong vision for human-centric usability and practical technical solutions allowed us to receive a fully actionable plan for the IT system for our future business.”

Petri Valkama, Investment Director at NREP

The Client

NREP is recognised as the leading real estate investor and innovator in the Nordics. NREP was founded on the simple idea that real estate – the world’s largest product category – is ready for a change. NREP works to drive this change, improving the built environment to the benefit of customers, communities, and cities.

In 2019, NREP launched a new co-living concept, unique in its flexibility, services, sense of community and pricing. Noli Studios combines comforts of home with hotel amenities and provides modern, fully or lightly furnished studios and access to shared spaces. The studios can be booked flexibly for a day, a month or even longer.

How we got Started

In 2017 NREP contracted Oivan to help them in designing the IT system for its future business concept, which was then still in stealth-mode. This business concept was later launched in 2019 as the Noli Studios serviced living concept.

At the beginning of the project, we took responsibility for turning NREP’s innovative ideas into a defined service concept and meticulously crafted an IT architecture plan.

The Solution

The project started in the summer of 2017 with a kick-off workshop lead by Oivan’s CEO Rami Korhonen, who has 20-years of experience in designing digital services. At the kick-off workshop Oivan and NREP agreed on the project management processes and started to: Design User Personas, List Required Features, Identify Potential Risks, Define Project Success Criteria, and Create Customer Journeys.

After the kick-off workshop, Oivan’s UX designer and Senior Software Architect Aki took charge of taking the project forward from Oivan’s side. The parties settled on a 2-week sprint cycle and started the challenging and inspiring work.