Fleet management – one of the areas of control in kicksharing, which is the organization of the transport fleet: ensuring uninterrupted operation of scooters and optimizing the work of technicians, drivers and other professionals. The main task is to prevent downtime of neither equipment nor personnel and to provide conditions for stable demand for scooters.
The average number of trips per day per transport unit should be considered the key metric of your performance in this area. A good sales turnover is a rate of 4 trips. And although the quantity depends on many factors, the main ones are only two: the intensity of the human traffic at the location of the scooter and the availability of the necessary infrastructure for a comfortable ride. To avoid downtime, you should carefully study the layout of the city and identify the likely places where people congregate. In most cases, urban activity is concentrated in the center, where there is a large number of offices, shopping centers and various establishments. Try to ensure that transport is arranged to reach the maximum coverage in popular areas of the city. Scooters can also be located at subway entrances, public transport stops, universities, cinemas and parking areas. The city’s recreational areas: parks, squares, and embankments should be singled out separately. Once you have identified the locations with the greatest potential to attract user traffic, check before placing the scooters whether customers will be comfortable and safe to move in these areas.
The next important task that needs to be successfully addressed is to respond quickly to fluctuations in demand in different areas of the city, breaking or discharging scooters, and parking in unprofitable areas. The downtime of your transportation is a time of lost profit, which should not be tolerated. To manage your transport well and increase sales, you must clearly understand the patterns of your customers’ behavior. According to statistics, the peak of trips on weekdays falls on the period from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., when most people return home from work. The most likely route scenario is from the center to the periphery of the city. You need to continually monitor the location of scooters to play smartly on users’ needs. If you see that during the day a large number of vehicles are parked in areas of low demand, it is a good time to repaint it, preparing for the evening peak. The situation with demand for scooters during the weekend is a separate story. At this time, most people think about rest and fun activities, so the emphasis should be on increasing the volume of the park in the recreational areas of the city: embankments, squares and parks, where many citizens spend their free time. In order not to waste extra resources on permanent repackaging offer its users to park scooters in profitable areas in exchange for a reward. For example, it may be a promo code for a free unlock or travel time in exchange for 3 parking spaces from the “red” zone to the green one. Also, monitor the number of spare parts in stock at all times and in case of mass breakdowns, your technicians have the opportunity to quickly repair scooters, without wasting time waiting for the delivery of additional spare parts.
Remember as well that scooters left on the streets of the city should not interfere with the movement of pedestrians. Prepare user friendly parking instructions and remind them at the end of the trip. Your transport should not be the object of constant complaints from citizens, because it will inevitably negatively affect the loyalty of local authorities and will reduce their desire to meet you halfway.
The second most important issue is the protection of the vehicle. Your vehicles are scattered throughout the city and always in plain sight, making them vulnerable to acts of vandalism and theft. Due to the anti-vandal bolts and acoustic alarms on most models of scooters it became easier to solve the problem. But despite this, there are still craftsmen who constantly try to unscrew or steal a scooter. This turns your vehicle illiquid and forces you to spend time solving the problem. To minimize your waste of resources, you need to build a clear system of response to various suspicious incidents. Theft in kicksharing is part of the business model, so ideally you should accept it and put separate budgets on this aspect. If you see a disconnected vehicle start moving, your security department should get involved promptly. Direct communication with law enforcement is required so that the stolen vehicle can be recovered as quickly as possible.
Scootapi software fully allows you to actively monitor the state and location of vehicles, quickly respond to fluctuations in demand, and quickly identify breakdowns and suspicious actions with scooters. For example, our analysis system shows the percentage of the fleet involved and suggests which scooters have not been used for a long time therefore you can quickly change the vehicle fleet layout to improve efficiency. We have also implemented Heatmap, which allows you to track the most popular places to start and finish your trips and helps you to assess the needs of customers more accurately.
If you want to know everything about your transport, have a wide range of tools to analyze the efficiency of fleet management, and not waste huge financial resources, contact us and we will help you build a well-functioning system for your kicksharing in any city.
