Vehicle fleet size: 55
Location: North America
Buyer: Owner Operator

The Challenge

Uber came into the market and drove down this organization’s revenue by 35%. They lost drivers, they lost clients and their cost per booking went from $1.25 per ride to nearly $4.55. They owner operator was losing sleep at night. He was worried if business was going to survive another year. He had to do something. He started by writing down his options on a whiteboard. He broke them down into two categories. Generate revenue, Save costs.

Possible Solutions

Generate Revenue

• Spend money on advertising
• Promote his own app.
• Shift his business model (focus more on corporate customers etc.. )

Save Costs

• Move to a cheaper Dispatch system
• Lower Hardware costs
• Outsource call center
• Right size fleet

Solution-Evaluation Results

After a number of conversations with his peers , friends , family and even a couple of competitors, a few options came to light:

1. Outsourcing dispatch was something , that definitely needed to be looked at further.
2. Advertising was going to be way too expensive, and there is no guarantee on the impact.
3. Spending money on his own app and trying to market it, would be futile.
4. Focusing on corporate , may help, but will not necessarily be a long term solution
5. Moving to a cheaper dispatch system, even if it did not have all the bells and whistles of his current system, would save him a lot of money.
6. Slowly moving away from built in Hardware to a BYOD -Bring your own device. Tablet model, might save some costs.
7. Right sizing fleet, a must do. These savings will not be big, but they will help.

Major Decisions

So , what next? Decision made to move forward on two major next steps, immediately..

1. Move to a cheaper dispatch system
2. Slowly move away from built in Hardware to BYOD/ Tablet Drivers bring their own device.
3. Move to DDS TaxiBook system.
4. Drivers to start investing in their own tablets.

Results

After moving to the DDS TaxiBook System. There were able to lower their costs by 35% . Business has started to come back , and the owner gets a lot more sleep.

Note: This not an actual case study of a customer. This is an amalgamation of a number of similar types of customers that have moved to DDS.