Discover the 5 value steps to run your digitalization process within your car rental organization.
You certainly already have a lot of various reports and tables that you use every day to pilot your operations and optimize your sales. After years of doing it, your process is fast (almost just because you use to do it) and seems to be easy. However, you know that it is not perfect or ideal. Why? because :
I have some prospects who are working during the evening to do their rate shopping and aggregate their data extracted from the operating system to update their pivot table!
To start implementing your digitalization project, two minimum steps have to be completed.
In quality for sure! It seems obvious that all operating systems provide reliable data but I have seen many systems supplying bad quality. No matter if you are a top franchisee in a big Mediterranean destination or a local operator, data quality was and is sometimes an issue.
Then, data has to be available every night. I am not referring to reports available in the software but real IT extract usually running via SQL queries. We have two prospects with whom we are facing a lot of difficulties setting a bunch of extracts every night. And these difficulties have nothing linked to the car rental operator size.
The revenue manager of a major corporate country located on the west side of Europe stated that he has to wait till 10 am every day to get all his Business Intelligence optimization reports updated. So, in practice, he can not start analyzing before 10!
The one that counts. The one that enables the business analyst to understand better, more and capture the future trends, the data that is useful to anticipate the demand and the fleet planned.
At WeYield, here are the minimum data requirements we have to get every night stored on our servers hosted in France following GDPR regulations (not on AWS or Google):
Tip: here the list of the car rental operating systems we love at WeYield because they are efficient, reliable, and fast to plug with us.
Now you have achieved two main steps thus
you have good data (we can help you to collect them)
you have decided to stop feeding some excel spreadsheets manually (we can not help you as it is your sole decision but we can assist you if you want to try at least!)
Let’s dive into the core of the digitalization of your revenue management process. What will this project deliver as a benefit to you daily?
That’s nice, isn’t it? All your piloting reports are now aggregated and computed during the night while you are sleeping. The key performance indicators are updated every morning. I mean the KPI for yesterday, the year-on-year and most important, the ones for the future to come, etc, etc. You are more efficient, more productive.
All KPI or analytics are automatically updated and whenever some team fellows want to have a snapshot of their situation, they can refresh their browser. In addition, the information is instantly forwarded to all teams who has an account (not limitation in number of users at WeYield).
For the management, there is no more the headache of discussing for hours, the different point of view of the Sales vs the Operations vs the Finance attending a meeting with their own set of data that they all run differently. Now, with one central piloting tool, anybody can look at the data using their own angle but no more time is wasted challenging the source and way they have been computed anymore.
There is no manual interference to prepare, digest the data, update the reports and drop an email to the recipient list to share some analytics.
I have one prospect and one client that are both GM of their company. They are asking their business analyst to write an email every morning with various screenshots of different reports. With WeYield apps, they can check on the mobile directly during their breakfast!
Recent Covid19 lockdown put a light on the importance of maintaining the flow of data access when nobody is at the office.
In conclusion, for me, digital adoption is a core driver of sustainability and future growth. It is not a question of simply implementing a digitalization process but using the piloting tools available to the full extent possible. Turn the difficult times into an opportunity to rebuild your data structure and set new standards. And in particular, the digitization of uses has come to overcome distancing and confinement.
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