Tisséo Voyageurs operates the public transport network in the Toulouse metropolitan area and is the second-largest player of its kind in France. The company manages two metro lines (with a third under construction), a tram line, numerous bus lines, and a smartcard system for digital ticketing. With a workforce of over 2,700 employees, Tisséo supports nearly 100 different types of transport tickets.
In 2022 alone, people took 125.7 million trips using the Tisséo network — a clear sign of the essential role it plays in the region’s mobility.
Tisséo’s previous ticketing platform couldn’t keep up with the growing expectations of users and the operational complexity of the network. Purchasing or reloading tickets was often unintuitive and inefficient, leading to an increased number of support requests.
The system also struggled to handle the highly customized ticketing logic required for different user types — based on age, employment status, or location — and relied heavily on manual processing. This slowed down internal workflows and made it difficult to scale or evolve the platform further.
The goal of the project was to redesign Tisséo’s eCommerce platform to provide a smoother, more intuitive experience for users and reduce the operational burden on internal teams. This included streamlining the purchase and renewal of transport passes, automating complex pricing and eligibility rules, and integrating deeply with existing back-office and ticketing systems.
The project faced several key challenges. The system had to personalize the ticket offer based on user data like age or employment status, and support advanced fare rules, including the Toulouse-specific solidarity pricing. It also needed to handle both digital and physical products with different checkout flows. Tight integration with internal systems was required to ensure real-time updates, while the frontend had to meet accessibility standards and perform well on mobile.
Additionally, the project should be completed before card renewal season, mainly June 2024.
Sylius was the perfect choice for Tisséo’s online store for three main reasons. First, its flexibility helped create a great user experience while meeting different needs, especially when connecting to Tisséo’s complex system and setting up advanced pricing. Second, Sylius is reliable and offers tools to track incidents as they occur, for example, developers were able to centralize error logs in an analysis tool based on ElasticSearch. Third, the security built into Sylius, which is based on Symfony and thoroughly tested, kept everything safe and stable.
The team built the website using an Agile approach with 3-week work periods. Each period focused on specific goals through three main steps: building new features, showing the results, and gathering feedback for future work. This approach worked very well with Sylius, letting the development team stay focused while Tisséo staff could regularly test new features and share their thoughts.
The Sylius framework emerged as an ideal solution to our functional and technical challenges. It allowed us to avoid both heavily customizing standard software and building something entirely from scratch. Additionally, its pricing model met our expectations by avoiding the potentially unpredictable costs of SaaS solutions that charge based on sales percentages, giving us better control over our expenses.
On Emagma’s part, several significant strengths became evident: exceptional project management (including planning, oversight, commitment, attentiveness to customer needs, and understanding of functional requirements), extensive knowledge of Sylius and its capabilities, complete coverage of all skills necessary for an e-commerce project, and remarkable flexibility in adjusting resources throughout the project lifecycle.
Since launching the new Sylius-based platform, Tisséo has seen a complete transformation of its online services. Sylius‘ flexibility in handling complex pricing rules, subscriptions, and ticketing systems made it the right foundation for a robust, scalable eCommerce platform tailored to public transport needs. The platform launched right on schedule, even while adapting to changing requirements throughout the project. Much of this success can be credited to the strong partnership between Emagma and Tisséo teams, who worked hand in hand throughout the development process.
