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During 2020, many of our customers found that business mobility, business continuity and business planning were closely aligned. For many organisations, lockdown redefined how employees and customers interacted with the business.
This led to a change in how we worked with businesses on many levels. A wider range of decision-makers joined the mobility conversation. We began to talk about how a basic rental car or truck could drive revenue in very tough trading circumstances in sectors that ranged from construction to telecoms to horticulture.
For example, garden centres suddenly needed to deliver a season's worth of fast-wilting bedding plants because eager customers were unable to leave their homes. How could existing employees provide a temporary delivery service with only a basic driving licence?
Cars and vans became central to operations and drove a host of new requirements. That led us to introduce a number of small and large innovations and adaptations to how we work: not least how to ensure colleagues can be secure and have peace of mind in a single-occupancy vehicle, given that hygiene and safety are now foremost for employees and central to risk assessments.
This evolution is continuing to inform how businesses approach vehicle hire, which means that they are creating RFPs that embrace a larger scope of work. They're all addressing a central question: how can access to shared, on-demand mobility solve business-critical problems, maintain revenue and keep essential workers moving?
For example, health authorities are looking at how temporary or more long-term mobile units can ensure continuity of care in the community. One organisation realised that electric buggies could help healthcare workers be more productive by helping them to cover extended distances between patients and tasks.
The shift to home working also has a mobility dimension. Businesses know that employees will start travelling for business soon. But how often, from which locations, and why? Rental businesses can help to gather and analyse data to answer these questions to ensure that the right level of safe mobility is available when employees need to travel.
Opening the mobility conversation to different departments within the same organisation usually results in a better and more innovative solution that delivers more impact. Businesses can - and should - ask how their rental company providers can assist business operations more fundamentally and strategically.
Adrian Bewley is assistant vice president of business mobility for Europe at Enterprise Rent-A-Car
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Business Car Magazine © 2020 | Business Car is part of NS Media Group.
