If your plans for this year include issuing an invitation to tender for your mobility contract, you have a golden opportunity to deliver a significant win for your organisation. And the best bit? A few simple changes mean you’ll have to do less for a better return on your mobility proposals.
Before inviting organisations to tender for your mobility contract based on existing arrangements, first tell the market what challenges you are experiencing and what problems you’d like to solve. Then task them with coming up with new solutions drawing on their knowledge of all the latest mobility best practice, including transport options, operational hacks and user technologies. Take advice, explore your options, make the most of the consultancy on offer and take some time to future-proof your RFP.
Employee mobility is evolving rapidly, offering ever-more sophisticated solutions and greater choice in how to enable business journeys. Using a contract defined more than 18 months ago as the basis for your future supply may mean you’re missing out on recent developments.
Technology integration and vehicle telematics now provide valuable insight and data. Yet, there is an equal focus on business need, the employee experience and the social value of travel policies. When expertise on all of these considerations is combined, it means your mobility supplier can go beyond moving people from A to B to adding more value to your business.
You run the risk of missing out on opportunities to improve your colleagues’ travel experience, as well as potential for reduced costs and emissions, if you simply stick with what you’ve always done.
Look at the finer details when considering the scope of your mobility procurement. There is huge potential in simple operational changes like exploring better delivery and collection options and how to minimise their impact on costs and mileage. Where are you going to need vehicles to support a hybrid workforce that works from home a few days a week? Do you need executive cars? Do you require vans? Ask how your account will be managed, by whom and where they are located, because the relationships you have with your account managers, and then with the local depots, are crucial to success.
How will your supplier grow, flex and innovate their offering to support your organisation as it grows? Ask for examples of their best practice and the value they have brought by becoming a true partner. Use this process to find out whether their offering can support your whole organisation, including commercial vehicles, and whether they can provide alternatives to leasing and rental. Check how their systems integrate with others, such as SAP and travel management platforms for booking flights and hotels. Taking a holistic view of employee mobility will create a more seamless experience.
Take a step back to really consider your wider business objectives and how mobility could have a positive impact overall. It’s much more cost and time-efficient to future proof your new contract now rather than running the tender process again when you realise mobility is not meeting the core objectives of your business. It’s easy to assume a business ‘needs one type of vehicle’ or ‘needs a certain number of cars’, but until you convey your business values, objectives and needs, you may be missing out on what mobility has to offer holistically.
So, don’t settle for the same way things have always been done. There’s a whole new world of employee mobility options emerging almost daily, so challenge the market and ask them to do the work of bringing you brilliant solutions to accompany you on a bright new journey into your business’s future.
Andy Bland is head of business rental development UK and Ireland for Enterprise Mobility
