Insights and news from the ATOM Mobility team

Corporate car-sharing schemes are becoming an increasingly popular way for companies to provide transportation for their employees while also reducing costs and improving sustainability. In this blog post, we'll look at the benefits of corporate car-sharing schemes and how ATOM Mobility software can help companies deploy their own car-sharing scheme for their employees.

What is corporate car sharing and how does it work?

Corporate car sharing is a transportation solution that allows companies to provide access to a fleet of shared vehicles for their employees. Employees can reserve a car for a specific time period and use it for business-related travel. The cost of the rental is typically paid for by the company.

There are 2 main ways that corporate car sharing can be implemented:

• Company-owned fleet: The company can use its existing fleet, or purchase and maintain a fleet of vehicles specifically for sharing. Employees can reserve and use the vehicles as needed.

• Car rental partnership: The company can partner with a rental car company to provide access to a fleet of vehicles for car sharing. Employees can reserve and use the vehicles as needed.

In both cases, the company will need to set up the software for managing the car-sharing scheme, including reserving and booking vehicles, tracking usage, and handling payment processing. This can be done through an ATOM Mobility software platform.

What challenges corporate car sharing solves

Corporate car sharing can help to solve a number of challenges that companies may face:

• Maximize fleet utilisation and minimise fleet size: The high cost of owning and maintaining company vehicles can be significantly reduced. Companies can save money on car expenses such as purchase, maintenance, and insurance by using a car-sharing scheme to consolidate their current fleet size and maximise fleet utilisation.

• Limited parking availability: Car-sharing schemes can help to reduce the number of company-owned vehicles, which can be beneficial in situations where parking is limited or expensive.

• Environmental concerns: Car-sharing schemes can help to reduce carbon emissions and other environmental impacts of transportation.

• Employee mobility: Car-sharing schemes can provide employees with access to a vehicle when needed, even if they do not have their own. This employee benefits package is valued highly when new job offers are considered.

Here’s what to look for when it comes to corporate car-sharing software:

1) Vehicle reservation and booking: Employees should be able to view available vehicles and make reservations for the times they need to use a car. This can be done through a mobile app.

2) Keyless go via the app: The software should allow employees to locate available vehicles, unlock and use them without needing to go and collect the keys from god knows where.

3) Payment processing: The software should handle payment processing if the corporate compensates their trips partly, including the calculation of charges based on distance or time.

4) Vehicle maintenance and repair log: The software should allow the company to input any info about the cars and track the maintenance and repair needs of the shared vehicles. This info should be easily accessible by the car service provider as well.

5) Usage tracking and reporting: The software should provide detailed monitoring and reporting on the usage of the shared vehicles, including metrics such as the number of trips, distance travelled, and fleet utilisation by hours. This information can be used to optimise the car-sharing scheme and reduce costs.

6) User management: The software should allow the company to manage the users of the car-sharing scheme, including adding new users and different user roles and revoking access as needed.

7) Administrative controls: The software should provide the company with administrative controls to manage the car-sharing scheme, including the ability to set rules and guidelines, set rental rates, and so on.

Overall, the functionalities included in car-sharing software will depend on the specific needs and goals of the company and the car-sharing scheme.

If you would like to learn more about how to set up a corporate car-sharing scheme for your company, get in touch with our team here: book a call.

ATOM Mobility is a software provider with a corporate car sharing software that helps companies to deploy their own car-sharing scheme for their employees. Our software includes a range of features to support corporate car sharing, including online booking, vehicle tracking, payment processing, usage reporting, and user management.

🔥 We're excited to announce that the first-ever "ATOM Mobility Hub" program has concluded with Shrink Scooters taking home the main prize 🎉

ATOM Mobility will set them up with a free software solution for a year to accelerate the launching and growth of their business of bringing shared mobility to UK university campuses.

Congratulations also to the four runner-ups: Swap City, JETT, Mobi-EV, and Drop, as well as all the other teams successfully completing the program. 👏

We can't wait to see what you'll achieve in the future!

👏 Finally, we'd like to express our gratitude to the program's lead mentors and the program partners without whom the program would not be possible: Dr. Johanna Braun, Mario Gamper, KNOT // docking and charging for micromobility, Fluctuo, Funderbeam, ACTON, Anadue, Sumsub, movmi - Shared Mobility Consultants, Helve, EIT Urban Mobility

ATOM Mobility Hub is a free venture-building program meant to help ambitious entrepreneurs to build their mobility companies from zero. The nine-week programme ended with participant business pitches to mobility industry experts and investors on early December, 2022.

Read more:
https://labsoflatvia.com/en/news/student-led-company-triumphs-at-atom-mobility-hub

You can learn more about ATOM Mobility HUB here: 
https://atommobility.com/hub

If you are interested to start your own vehicle sharing/rental business – head over here to request a demo and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

ATOM Mobility has broadened the scope of its services by adding rental software to its platform. The new module allows car, bike, and scooter rental companies to automate and digitalize their rental business with ATOM Mobility's platform which features digital ID verification, keyless vehicle access, calendar booking and prepayment, automated hand-off inspection, and much more.  

This effectively allows ATOM Mobility customers to create an all-in-one Superapp for the on-demand mobility market, after the company also added ride-hailing/taxi software to its platform earlier in the year which gives companies easy-to-use solution to manage their customers, drivers, and operations, all from one place. The platform can facilitate virtually any vehicle, be it a scooter, bike, car, moped, or even golf cart, for on-demand short-term, one-off trips, as well as for month-long rentals, and everything in between. 

It can benefit your mobility business, too

In addition to giving traditional vehicle rentals a simple and highly-efficient way to digitalize their operations and improve customer experience, integrating a rental module also serves to unlock new business opportunities.

Fleet owners can have all the different modes in one app, serving tourists and locals with the types of vehicles and services in need at any given moment, e.g. a scooter for a short trip on a sunny day, a taxi on a rainy one, and a rental car for a weekend getaway. Mobility service providers can mix and match the various modules to suit their offerings. For example, new market entrants can start with one operational model, and diversify their services as they grow by adding other modules to their existing app. 

The rental business model doesn't necessarily require adding new vehicles – it has the potential to maximize revenue from existing services. For instance, bike rentals can benefit from adding rental options alongside their on-demand, free-floating model, by allocating part of their fleet for renting purposes. To illustrate, depending on the location, an e-bike could bring in 15-25 EUR when rented for a full day, as compared to an average of 3 EUR per on-demand ride, with one to five uses a day. Accordingly, the rental model can be more profitable for the operator, as well as more convenient for the user, as they get the bike for the full day. 

Another chief benefactor of the new rental module is traditional car rental companies. For one, they can digitalize their operations and offer a fantastic, fully digital self-service experience to their customers, making it easier to pick up and drop off vehicles. Service digitalization also enables car rentals to open remote automated branches by partnering with hotels, parking lot owners, gas stations, etc. This may imbue extra convenience in your operations, as clients don't have to travel halfway across the city just to pick up their vehicle. 

A solution that works for everyone

As with previous products, the rental module is fully white-label, allowing the app to be customized with your brand design and colors. All whilst offering a smooth and convenient in-app rental experience for your customers. 

With ATOM Mobility's rental module, operators will also gain access to a powerful dashboard for managing their fleets, bookings, and customers. In it, you may:

1. Track vehicle information in real-time, e.g. for cars – location, errors, battery/fuel level, odometer data, engine status, door status, and more,
2. Set up your preferred pricing system, be it fixed, hourly, daily rental, distance-based, or otherwise,
3. Get reports and analyses on everything from users and revenue to the utilization of vehicles by different periods, vehicle models, and locations,
4. And more.

ATOM Mobility's all-in-one platform is the first of its kind, offering operators an opportunity to provide an excellent mobility service to their local community and visiting tourists. By listening to its customers and staying a few steps ahead of the market, ATOM was able to create a comprehensive, all-inclusive SuperApp. Accordingly, all components integrate seamlessly ensuring a smooth, hiccup-free, and user-friendly experience for both operators and their customers. 

Learn more about different solutions and modules: 

Vehicle sharing module (on-demand, mostly short trips): https://atommobility.com/products-share
Rental module (pre-booking, mostly weekly and monthly rentals): https://atommobility.com/products-rent
Ride-hailing/taxi module: https://ride.atommobility.com

Let us show you how it all works – head over here to request a demo and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

“Using ATOM Mobility's platform, we were able to open up our taxi business to an entirely different target market  – younger people. We've been able to offer a more simplified booking process to continue offering quality service to our customers, which is our guiding principle.” - Jamal, Founder and CEO of Vift

Experience in the taxi business: 6 years
Country: Sweden
Web page: https://viftmobility.com
App store: https://apps.apple.com/vn/app/vift/id1631027113
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vift.app

As engineering students in the Swedish city of Örebro, just west of Stockholm, the Zindi brothers saw market demand and decided to launch their own taxi company. Starting six years ago, the business has grown to account for 8% of the local taxi market, attracting a higher-end clientele. 

One year ago, founder and CEO Jamal Zindi was looking for opportunities to further grow his business. At the time, Vift operated as a classical taxi company – based on receiving phone calls and dispatching drivers. By using the ATOM Mobility platform, he was able to launch his own dedicated mobile app, which clients could use to directly order and pay for their taxis. 

The effect of digitising his business was immediate – Jamal shares that they have received a considerable boost to business, as it opens the door to a new target audience. He shares that human behaviour regarding booking has changed. Many young people don't like picking up the phone to make a taxi booking, or people sitting in meetings aren't able to make a call. Having an app to offer makes all the difference.

Quality as a North Star

Jamal shares that throughout all of his journey as an entrepreneur, his guiding principle has always been to offer the best possible quality to clients. 

“In the services sector, it's not about who offers it cheaper, it's who serves their clients better. We offer better cars, better drivers, better customer experience. If you do it better, people will be willing to pay a premium,” explains Jamal.

In the early days, Vift's differentiating factor was an improved experience. They, and their drivers, were from an academic background. They were younger than most taxi drivers in Örebro at the time, which Jamal considered an advantage. They were able to bring an improved customer experience to their clients, which was appreciated. 

They aren't in a hurry to expand in size or geography. Jamal emphasises that they're looking to build a solid foundation and only then expand upon that.

“We don't want to start with too many cars. Our strategy is to build up the business in stages. Because if the foundation is strong, you will not fall. Once you have a system in place, it's easier to go to other cities.”

Vift has its own fleet of cars, and, using the ATOM Mobility platform, it can now onboard other drivers onto its platform. Though they're not in a hurry – they're establishing quality first and then will look beyond their borders.

Locally-owned as a key differentiator

The city of Örebro does not lack in its fair share of taxi sharing apps. They have Bolt, Uber, and others. But what Vift can offer and Uber can't, is hyper-local customer service – both for drivers and for end-customers.

“There are Bolt and Uber, they drive very cheaply. But the management and owners are not in Sweden. So if you have a question, you won't receive a response that fully understands your situation. People appreciate that we're from Sweden, that they can contact us, and that they can receive a response in their own language,” comments Jamal.

Using their competitive advantage, they believe that in just 2 years, they will be the biggest company in Örebro. And after that, they'll replicate their experience in other cities, still based on quality-over-quantity.

The secret to surviving in the taxi business – thinking 10 years ahead

One thing that sets Vift apart from traditional taxi services is their future-oriented mindset. Jamal shares that when making business decisions, he thinks about what will be relevant in 5-10 years' time. This way, he's able to stay ahead of the competition, and relevant to his customers.

One way this comes across is in the vehicles they choose. 

“Right now, all of our cars are hybrid. But very soon we'll be switching to a fully electric vehicle fleet. It's the better choice – for business, for the environment. That is where mobility is heading, and that's where we have to be as well.”

When asked about his tips for other entrepreneurs looking to start their own taxi business, Jamal stays true to his values:

“Constant development. Professional standards. Work with the heart. Quality is what matters. Consider the future – if you only do things for today, then you'll fall down.” 

Through working together, Vift has significantly increased its demand and revenue. Laying the strong foundation for digital services, Vift can now continue to build out the business and reach its goals of dominating the local market and expanding past its borders.

Learn more about ATOM Mobility ride-hailing and taxi platform here: https://ride.atommobility.com