Web based car rental software - a must for every car rental company

Companies  in the car rental industry have always been investing big money  in car rental software and IT in general. The second most important investment of  any  serious car rental company , after the fleet of course, is without any doubt the investments in IT. For the past decades car rental companies have been using car rental systems that worked as either desktop applications or client server solutions. Although  a huge number of such solutions  are still out there and currently possessing  an essential market share,  I am quite certain that during the latest years we are witnessing  a fast overtake by the web applications or cloud applications, call them what you want . The adoption of the  web technology is of course a global phenomenon but actually the car rental industry has always been very fast to adopt new technologies and thus it's being able to utilize the profound functionality of IT systems and benefit from them as much as possible.

Looking back at the last two decades my picture of a car rental company is way different from the picture I see today. Perhaps the only thing that remains unchanged is of course the product of  a car rental company  which is -  no doubt about it -   a car rental.  

It might sound funny today but do not underestimate the essence of the dramatic step of a car rental company that is to stop receiving reservations over the fax machine and start receiving reservations via ASCII files, excel files and emails.  The old picture that I have in my head shows big reservation departments , vast number of clerks overloaded with the task of entering the reservations from the faxes, from the emails or the files into car rental system database. The old picture shows also a managers changing car rental rates 2-3 times a year and sending them to their  agents by fax and later via email containing excel files. 

And even though this time was not too long ago,  we  suddenly saw the reservation department  shrinking in size. The reservations could now automatically come into the car rental system through an interface called "XML-interface". That came to change the landscape dramatically. The broker, the agent  could now exchange information regarding the bookings automatically without any human intervention. Creepy? Not at all. XML technology has brought a real revolution. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is a global way to describe data and therefore it provides the possibility  for software to exchange information with another software. The manager can now update the rates in his/her car rental software and at the same time update the prices in the agent's software and its 10 websites instantly.The car rental company owner can have as many websites as he/she wants and link them to the same database that the back office system is using. Working partners may use special portals in order to access or enter information into the system.

Mobility is a critical aspect in a car rental company. The employees of a car rental company are required to move between different locations as they have to deliver or collect cars outside the office. They have to move cars to various locations, they have to prepare cars for a rental and sometimes are required to help clients in the road. There is a great need for accessing information in the car rental system and updating the system while on-the-move. The managers need to access essential information while either on a conference abroad, or while on a meeting with an important partner.  Along with the expansion of internet communication technologies like  Wi-fi networks , 3g and 4g technologies and increasing internet speeds there was also a huge expansion of software technologies that aimed to enhance the functionality, the security and the look of a web application.

A web application is installed on a Webs server (like IIS or Apache )  and needs no additional installation leading to a significant decrease of maintenance costs. In order to run a web application you only need a web browser like Chrome, IE, Safari, Opera et c.
In addition it is platform-independent as you may run it from your PC, your iPad or your smart phone.  

Car rental customers have much higher expectations regarding the quality of service to be given than ever before and that means much higher requirements on the IT system. Yes indeed, customers expect highest possible quality of service, instant information, possibility to interact with the information system from the stage of initiating the reservation until the stage of evaluating the service provided.

A well integrated web based car rental application may allow to a number of different players, like owners, managers, employees, agents and brokers, business partners, customers,  no matter the geographical location, no matter the time, to  interact with the system silently, update the system and significantly reduce labour cost and telephone bills.

Planning and developing a car rental software like Carhire Manager Web http://www.carhiremanagerweb.com/ has been and will continue to be a very demanding but at the same time a very joyful and exciting  task. History has to follow its course and if you want to lead you have to be a step ahead and innovate the future.




Carhire Manager Web http://www.carhiremanagerweb.com/ 
Datalogic Consultants http://www.datalogicco.com