Enterprise has introduced its new online booking platform – Enterprise Travel Direct (ETD) – following a 12-month pilot programme.

This free, interactive online journey planning and booking system is specifically developed to help organisations better manage how their employees travel for work.

In what Enterprise believes to be a “first”, the journey assessment and booking system enables customers to compare the cost of daily rental, hourly car club and grey fleet based on a planned journey and real-time vehicle availability.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s assistant vice president of business and mobility UK & Ireland Adrian Bewley said: “This is a huge step forward in how businesses and public-sector fleets manage employee mobility.

"You can only be certain you’ve made the best choice for a trip if you compare the total cost of the available options – daily rental, car club and even grey fleet.

“Businesses have struggled to measure and contain the real cost of employee mobility because they lacked the data or it wasn’t available in a format that could be easily analysed.

"Because ETD records all the details of every journey, it provides employers with a wealth of data that can be used to refine business travel to more cost-effective options.”

Employees can compare the actual cost of a specific journey at a determined time depending on whether they use a private vehicle and recharge mileage, a car club or a daily rental car.

The system will assess whether certain trips would benefit from Enterprise’s daily rental or hourly hire, as a cost-effective alternative.

It also requires employees to confirm that their private vehicle is suitable for business use, so organisations that allow grey fleet as an option can be reassured that these journeys are risk assessed before employees travel.

The system also shows the cost of the grey fleet journey if this is permitted by the travel policy. This means employees can make an informed choice based on total cost as well as vehicle availability before booking their preferred option.

“ETD has evolved from our existing booking platforms and has been subjected to rigorous real-world testing. We believed it was vital to give senior decision-makers absolute clarity on the actual costs of keeping their employees mobile,” said Bewley.

In order to ensure effectiveness and usability, ETD has been extensively piloted with a number of large public sector fleets with an “overwhelmingly positive” response.

 

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