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5 Steps on how to implement MaaS (Mobility as a Service) into your business

Published on
January 7, 2019
Author
Matt Lenton
Marketing Director
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Revolutionising your travel model can appear daunting at first glance, but by carefully considering the necessary steps towards integrating Mobility as a Service into your business it can make the transition appear almost seamless. Many SME’s will quickly begin to see the benefits of shifting their business travel ahead of the curve, relying on MaaS to organise and manage their journeys.

Shifting your travel model to MaaS isn’t merely an optimisation of your travel, it can be considered as a complete cultural shift. Moving your focus from company car to other more cost-efficient alternatives such as Car Clubs and Door-to-Door services will massively adapt the way not only your business travel works, but how your employees view their commutes, be they infrequent or regular.

1. Identifying if the business is prepared to make the transition

The first step towards into engaging with Mobility as a Service is recognising whether your company will serve to benefit from using it. For example, a company based of 20 employees that don’t require business travel booking on at least a somewhat frequent basis may not expect to see as much of a benefit from using MaaS platforms as opposed to companies with a surplus of 100 employees who frequently travel would.

One method of valuing the benefits of Mobility as a Service for your business is to identify your current expenditure on travel. By identifying these costs and measuring them up travel directors can quickly decipher whether a service that provides/consolidates alternative methods of travel compared to conventional methods will be cost-effective and worth devoting an entire shift in your company’s travel model. An alternative to a full-scale integration, a company can identify individual departments that would benefit directly from Mobility as a Service and focus their attention to transitioning these areas singularly.

Companies need to consider their historical data, their current average of travel costs and recent travel expense claims to accurately estimate the amount of assistance a MaaS powered travel model would provide.

Many companies overlook micro-journeys when measuring their total cost of mobility. Micro-journeys consist of the smaller journeys in between the main portions of travel, such as the taxi from your home to the train station. These portions of travel should be critical to calculating the total cost of a journey yet are often forgotten about when final totals are counted. A primary function of MaaS platforms is to provide a door-to-door service, meaning it accommodates and includes all these micro-journeys in its journey planner, meaning a travel manager can record a significantly more accurate travel cost.

2. Method of implementation

The method in which a company transitions from the standard company fleet to Mobility as a Service is just as critical as the final result. A complete shift may cause difficulty and may make the process of using MaaS in the most effective manner possible a lot harder, therefore a company should consider the possibility of having a transition plan.

Plans involving the shift towards Mobility as a Service may include having planned phases that gradually integrate MaaS platforms into the company’s business travel. Having a gradual transition that work in intermittent integrations have the potential to make the whole process run a lot smoother, from both a logistical perspective and from the perspective of your employees.

Employees need to be willing and open to the idea of using a MaaS operated travel model, therefore having a gradual procedure will allow them to accustom to the idea and see the benefits of it’s use from a first-person perspective rather than simply going into Mobility as a Service completely unaware of its purpose.

MaaS is by definition a service. Because of this, there are multiple providers that can deliver the integration into your travel and picking the most suitable provider is critical ensuring you get the most out of Mobility as a Service as you can. Depending on how you use the service, such as using it for personal travel or business travel, may affect which MaaS provider is most suitable for you.

When looking from a business perspective, a company would want to search for a MaaS provider that directly prioritises business travel and allows for the possibility of better budget management. Mobilleo is a platform that specialises in providing mobility solutions from an executive standpoint, providing statistics and data upon all your travels and allows you to book all parts of your journey through one platform. Making the travel booking process significantly easier and quicker is one of the many benefits MaaS can bring to SME’s looking to better control their expenditure.

3. Pilot launch

A company doesn’t want to blindly run into a complete shift in their infrastructure without knowing whether it will truly benefit them, therefore it may be beneficial to run a pilot test of Mobility as a Service using a small number of employees. By doing so, it allows a manager to accurately look at results whilst its use not having a drastic effect on how the company currently runs. In addition to this, it also allows for a small section of the company to become accustomed to the platform, meaning they can give useful feedback on the product and eventually, should the company implement Mobility as a Service throughout all their employees, they can educate others on how to efficiently use the platform.

The pilot launch is a critical component of the MaaS implementation process due to the feedback it provides and the data it collects. From a pilot test using only a small number of employees a travel manager can find out areas of improvement and adapt them accordingly when the time comes to integrate the entire companies travel into a MaaS operated system.

4. Launch

Rolling out Mobility as a Service company wide comes after the pilot test. This part of the process will be made significantly easier after having followed the other steps before hand. The pilot will have helped to iron out and bugs and issues. To successfully launch you will need a well thought out launch plan. This will look at education and incentivising employees as they will be using Mobility as a Service first hand.

Once the other steps have been completed, the transition to MaaS operated travel will be as seamless and efficient as possible. Using the prior knowledge from the pilot tests, you can effectively educate the new users on how to use the platform and how to gain the major benefits from the new model as well as using the pilot tester’s feedback to make the experience much more practical for employees.

5. Refinement

After a long enough period of using Mobility as a Service to better organise travel, your employees will have become accustomed to all the applications of the platform. Eventually, employees will be ready to give feedback upon MaaS and deliver an accurate insight into the benefits of the service as well as the areas that require improvement.

One of the many positives of Mobility as a Service is that it is still a developing concept, therefore any feedback given from the users have a very high chance of being implemented into the app in the future.

Being directly given feedback from your users can also help to improve the product on the business’ end. By taking in feedback, travel managers within the SME can hope to gain critical knowledge on how to better organise and book travel through the platform, eventually allowing them to provide the best possible travel delivery to the employees.

After having followed all the prior steps your company should have implemented Mobility as a Service in the smoothest and effective way possible. Once the service is working company-wide, many SME’s should expect to see significant boosts in the amount of money and time saved in travel, as well as much more employee satisfaction upon the ability to personalise their travel.