Business trip with hurdles

Mobility is indispensable for everyday business life. In this day and age, it is almost impossible to take a business trip without multimodal travel, including its inconveniences.

Mandatory: customer-friendly user interface

The share of different mobility service providers in the total trip is getting higher and higher, and the age of digitalization has now forced them to create a more or less customer- and user-friendly online user interface for almost every mode of transportation. This can be divided into the classic three steps:

• Information: The customer receives a simple, customer-friendly and transparent overview of his potential trip and can view and configure it at any time based on various criteria (duration, route, period, costs ...).
• Booking/Reservation: Based on the information, the customer can book/reserve the route with the means of transport that suits him/her.
• Payment: The customer can pay and settle the booked/reserved trip directly or after completion of the trip without paper or cash.

A majority of mobility providers have already recognized and implemented that they need to realize exactly these three steps on their platforms in a transparent and intuitive way to gain customer acceptance.

Consequently, one could make the assumption that digitization is in full swing. Viewed individually, this seems to have been the case in many cases.

The example of the leading car-sharing providers shows how the three steps can be easily implemented via smartphone app, RFID card and stored payment method.

The customer can use the service with minimal effort at almost any time and in many places.

Does this also apply to business trips?

Let's return to our initial scenario. In the classic business trip, the customer is often instructed to change the means of transport and the provider of his mobility service several times. He thus has to book and pay for his trip with different providers via different platforms.

But compared to single-mode travel, the three steps described are no longer so easy to implement. It can be observed, for example, that as the number of transportation mode changes increases, booking and payment become more and more complex. The holistic integration of the three steps described at the beginning is weakening more and more.

The first step - information - can often still be fulfilled when switching from one mode of transport to the second. When switching from ICE to public transport, for example, timetables and times can be viewed across different transport modes via Deutsche Bahn's app.

It may also be possible to implement step two - booking/reservation via two modes of transport. However, at the latest when we reach the point of payment, joint processing - with the exception of a few cooperative ventures between individual mobility service providers - is not feasible via a common platform, and the limits of user-friendly processing are quickly revealed.

As the breadth of mobility service provider integration increases, the depth of integration continuously decreases.

One platform - one invoice

With Smile, NTT Data has broken through this barrier and built the first bridges between the various mobility service providers for private use.

Within the framework of a research project, Smile has succeeded in creating a fully integrated mobility solution for the city of Vienna, integrating public transport, various car and bike sharing providers, cab services and other partners within a single platform.

Between several transport modes, all three steps of a common customer- and user-friendly online user interface can thus be executed via one application. The target customers are thus all users who want to make their journey with the greatest efficiency across all modes of transport.

In private use, networked mobility has already begun to spread, and individually, modern mobility service providers have already become strongly established. Acceptance has grown steadily in recent years.

Carsharing providers in major cities in particular are showing strong growth, both in fleet size and in membership. But vehicle utilization is still one of the biggest challenges for providers.

The demand for constant availability and the directly correlated demand for an increase in the number of vehicles cause a high cost factor, which can only be compensated for by constantly high utilization rates.

But in the cities, utilization peaks have so far only been observed outside core working hours (between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. and between 5:00 and 10:00 p.m.) and at weekends. During the rest of the time, a large proportion of the vehicles are unused in the cities and do not generate any revenue.

In addition, more than 70 percent of traffic in major cities on weekdays is caused by rush-hour traffic. This almost exclusively falls precisely into the time slots listed for the peak utilization of the car sharing providers.

Another interesting observation is that of company pool vehicles. Compared to the car sharing vehicles, these show exactly countercyclical utilization peaks.

The highest utilization is precisely within the classic core working hours. The pool vehicles are also unused for the rest of the time.

Corporate fleet and car sharing

It seems reasonable to think that the two mobility solutions could or even should be combined in some way to balance out the uneven load peaks.

This would create a serious solution to reduce traffic, environmental pollution, and user costs and time. But how should the solution be implemented in reality?

Public sharing solutions would have to be able to be used for business and pool vehicles for private use.

Integrated mobility solution

NTT Data has developed a sharing solution that is beginning to take this approach across different companies' vehicle fleets: NTT Data Sharing.

In the process, all of a company's pool vehicles, which were previously assigned to individual departments or divisions, are to be detached from them and made available centrally to all employees.

These can be booked online via an application, opened without a key and released for (private) use. Employees can thus access the vehicles easily and at any time.

In addition, the fleet manager has a transparent view of vehicle utilization, damage and usage behavior. A wide range of functionalities is thus possible.

The sharing solution is expected to increase vehicle utilization, reduce fleet size and lower fleet costs, and generate additional revenue for the company.

The way it works is as follows: A platform is set up within the internal systems of the company concerned. All available vehicles are listed and grouped by vehicle class.

All employees are given access to this platform and can access the vehicle pool via an application. If an employee wants to use a vehicle, he or she selects a vehicle category (small, mid-size, luxury car) and books it for a fixed period. It is not possible to select a specific vehicle.

Only 30 minutes before the start of the trip, the employee is assigned a vehicle based on booking periods, requested vehicle classes as well as geographical locations.

Using an on-board unit installed in the vehicle and an RFID card, the vehicles can be opened and put into operation without the use of a key, as is the case with well-known car-sharing providers.

Vehicle data is also communicated to the platform via the on-board unit. Once the trip is complete, the usage can be billed immediately in a paperless and uncomplicated manner.

Dynamic distribution thus allows vehicles to be ideally utilized, and fewer vehicles are needed in total to meet the same mobility needs.

In addition, the vehicles can be booked for private use by employees. Due to the digital tracking of the trip, it can subsequently be accounted for correctly and paperlessly in terms of tax law.

Additional revenue can thus be generated for the company and vehicle utilization can be increased. The platform also has ready-made interfaces to already established mobility service providers.

In the future, it will be possible to connect these directly so that car sharing, bike sharing, public transport or other service providers can be booked and charged directly via the platform.

The former fleet manager could thus evolve into a mobility manager and manage the entire mobility of his employees. NTT Data Sharing thus forms another bridge to make mobility more efficient in today's world through networking.

The private use of company vehicles thus also represents an initial approach to balancing the interests of public car sharing and company vehicle use. A multimodal transport solution is thus implemented in a simple and user-friendly way.