What to look for in software and hardware solutions for corporate and community carsharing

Carsharing is becoming an increasingly popular and sustainable alternative to vehicle ownership. In addition to public carsharing, many companies are now offering Corporate Carsharing to their employees, and numerous commercial providers are offering Community Carsharing to residents, recognizing the advantages of sharing their own fleets in communities with closed user groups. To meet the growing demand for vehicle sharing, companies are constantly innovating and improving their technology solutions. Two suppliers of such solutions who often work together to enable carsharing are INVERS and WeGo. Let’s explore what carsharing operators need from their technology providers and use INVERS and WeGo technologies to illustrate.

INVERS is a provider of hardware solutions for shared vehicles, who offer a range of telematics and sharing technology. Their hardware enables shared vehicles to be locked and unlocked remotely, and provides on-board technology for managing reservations, tracking usage, and monitoring vehicle health. The hardware is modular and scalable, making it suitable for any size of shared vehicle or shared mobility operations.

WeGo Carsharing Solutions is a leading provider of B2B carsharing software, headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. WeGo’s technology digitizes fleet management and vehicle reservations, empowering fleet owners and shared mobility providers to efficiently monitor and optimize their vehicle utilization. Their platform caters to various companies and organizations, including healthcare, staffing, housing, and more, regardless of fleet size. Companies can leverage the carsharing platform to provide their employees with access to vehicles for business use. The platform also allows companies to offer these vehicles for private use, for which the employees will be charged accordingly. This flexibility not only ensures efficient use of the fleet, but also provides employees with the convenience of access to mobility for both professional and personal needs.

The importance of a single, comprehensive solution

Running a carsharing service can be a very difficult and complex endeavour. Vehicles need to be tracked, maintained and secured; pricing models need to be optimized for profitability; billing needs to be accurate; and all the while the user-experience needs to be reliable and seamless to keep customers happy. The more systems that operators try to use to run these various parts of their business, the more complexity and potential for costly breakdowns they introduce.

Ideally, fleet operators should be able to manage their entire fleet from one single platform. This means not having to use different software applications to manage different aspects of their fleet, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. The streamlined operations provided by the integrated platform can help reduce the time and resources required to manage a mobility project, enabling fleet operators to focus on other important aspects of their business.

Operators also need useful data insights from all parts of their business to look for opportunities for improvement and differentiation. Data that helps them make informed decisions about fleet utilization, maintenance, and customer satisfaction can give them an edge over competitors and ensure profitability. At the same time, finding areas for improvement, optimization, and increasing efficiency can help reduce costs.

An integrated platform that brings all the benefits described above requires software that can handle all aspects of fleet operations, as well as hardware that can easily connect to the software and be installed in any vehicle. In our example, WeGo provides software solutions for all aspects of fleet management, while INVERS makes the carsharing hardware that reliably generates the data the software requires. By combining the two companies’ solutions, operators get a comprehensive carsharing solution that is both easy to use and highly efficient.

How a good software/hardware combo should work

Operators want to be up and running quickly, whether they’re launching an entire new service or expanding an existing fleet. However, deciphering data sent from the hardware to the software, as well as figuring how to send commands from the software for the hardware to act on can be a time-consuming task that requires extensive technical expertise. Therefore, operators should choose hardware and software partners that have worked together before and have ironed out bugs between their systems.

Additionally, to get their solution to the market quickly, operators want a good onboarding program as well as 24/7 support. This can be difficult if one or both of their suppliers of choice are many time-zones away, as this will lead to asynchronous and delayed communications. This problem can be alleviated by choosing local partners that have established communication channels between them, as well as detailed documentation and onboarding programs.

Once implemented, the hardware and software must work well together to provide an efficient and effective carsharing solution. A good software/hardware combo should enable fleet operators to manage their entire fleet in one platform, streamline operations, and reduce the time and resources required to manage a mobility project.

The WeGo/INVERS solution has been active and successful for several years now. It works by integrating the carsharing software and hardware. The hardware is fully compatible with the software, meaning that carsharing fleet managers can get up and running quickly, without the need for extensive technical expertise. Additionally, WeGo offers detailed onboarding to new customers as well as a 24/7 helpdesk for administrators that need more service and assistance.

Conclusion

WeGo and INVERS are committed to creating innovative vehicle-sharing solutions, and with their combined expertise, they are uniquely positioned to help fleet managers make the transition from vehicle ownership to vehicle sharing in a closed user environment, such as corporate carsharing and community carsharing. Together, they provide a powerful solution that benefits carsharing fleet operators and users alike.