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Our main qualification criteria were these points:
- Overall business process suitability for administrative functions, counter management, online reservations, contract management, advanced accounting and reporting and the ability for us to request our own reporting data.
- The quotations and bookings automation processes for staff, also from third party online sources, from online reservations through a company website and from commissions-based partners.
- Advanced rate management capabilities, which is without doubt one of the most fundamental and important points of any system.
- Fleet management, maintenance tracking (interval notification, reservations prevention and costs tracking).
- Flexible handing of tax calculation formulas for different product items and for us here in Mexico, we are required to auto submit data to the government for each contract issued, through an integrated communications connection.
- Staff management functions and tasks sharing.
- Intelligent management of multiple locations. So that the locations can operate independently or in groups, with targeted access permissions and also as part of the larger environment of the company.
- Financial institution integration with PCI security standards compliance, for integrated credit card processing.
- Revenue distribution and commissions management for staff and partners.
- Robustness of systems networks. We considered this point very important. We pinged the host servers for the various providers over a time range and analyzed the results. We also considered the expected services offered from the network hosts. So relatively speaking, we got quite deep into this point because of its importance on system reliability and also scalability. A good solution but that fails at critical times, or if there is a likely risk of data loss can be greatly disruptive.
- Staff and customer security procedures.
- Ease of system navigation, use, training and customer service.
- We also preferred a cloud based system.
- Reasonably priced.
We were not surprise to find out that the companies that offered the closest match to our ideal wish list were the recognized top three: TSD, Rent Centric and Blue Bird. For the most part, each was able to satisfy our requirements. However, there were some significant competitive differences as well:
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1) Top Car Rental Software Providers (In Alphabetical Order):
The Blue Bird system shows a strong understanding of Car Rental Business procedure, as all three companies do. They have very good data reporting. Customer support is also very good. Where they fall short is in the choice of architecture, client server on a Progress database, which limits accessibility and makes the initial setup more difficult and time consuming. It also limits the ability to use the system for Sales, such as with online reservations, partner access and third party system integrations. The architecture also makes the interface look outdated. Their choice of network is fair. The system is very good nevertheless. They are middle of the pack for pricing.
Rent Centric is the newest company of the three, existing for 15 years. They too demonstrate a strong understanding of Car Rental procedure. We did find, when entering Spanish data, there were input validations that needed fixing. Those were quickly resolved however. After getting past this point, we saw that the system was pleasant to use. The reporting engine was very good. Some reports were more detailed with Blue Bird and TSD but also vice versa. The reporting tool Rent Centric used was Crystal Reports based, which was better able to handle exports and server load than the Blue Bird reporting system. The architecture is a .Net cloud system like TSD. However Rent Centric separates each client implementation in its own operating environment, so they are more welcoming to customization requests and are less expensive to make changes. The host network reliability is probably the best of the three. The Rating engine is advanced. Also, they offer integrated GPS technology solutions, Car Share business automation and other models like that, which we found quite intriguing. We liked that Rent Centric lists their prices on their website and they are the least expensive of the three.
In this group, TSD is the longest serving system in the industry, so their understanding of the business process is likely the best. The architecture is .Net cloud based like Rent Centric’s, so it is more up to date than Blue Bird. Analyzing the TSD system though showed strong advantages on one side and strong disadvantages on the other. The TSD system has the most functionality of the three. However it seems that this is the case because they developed specific custom requests for clients and included them all in the same platform build. So the system is not the most user friendly, cluttered and somewhat difficult to navigate, even though the interface formatting is very clean. They have 24/7 customer support. However charges may apply if the request is found out to be a customer side issue. An advantage with TSD, as with Rent Centric, is that they both can offer GDS connectivity through their partners, to access booking opportunity from travel agents. However this business model is based on cut throat pricing to compete and there are extensive fees and resource commitments involved. One thing we did not like about TSD is their pricing policy which is not straight forward. There are many license components that you find out about as you move along in discussions and expect to negotiate to get the best deal. TSD is the highest priced system of the three.
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2) Runners Up – Capable of Running Business with Some Compromises (In Alphabetical Order):
Cars+ has been in the car rental technology market for a long time, I think maybe as long as TSD. They do not have much of a presence in North America any more, except Hertz still uses them with franchisees. The system capable but expensive to purchase and maintain. It is built on a legacy Linux platform.
This company is out of Australia. They have I think the dominant market share there, because of the time zone and because they are cheaper than TSD and Blue Bird. Also, because in Australia not a lot of credit card processing takes place through systems, so they do not have to be as advanced in certain areas or PCI compliant. The .asp architecture is used is moderately scalable.
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3) Generally Unsuitable:
There is no need to go into detail on each one of the software vendors I listed under this category. However there are two companies that need to be mentioned because they pop up everywhere on the internet which may mislead about their capability.
Everything about this company is suspicious. Their site looks like an exact copy of another company site. When I asked the owner (who is the sales guy as well) of ASAP Rent about this he told me that it was his site that was copied and of course the other company said the same. So we investigated. There is much content on the ASAP Rent site that is simply not true. I called the Better Business Bureau who’s logo shows at the top of the ASAP Rent website and they said they never heard of them. They are not registered with them. They also are not PCI compliant as claimed and the more you read the more you realize this company is trying to get business by appearing similar to another organization but have nothing close to that capability. Then they write for themselves favorable product reviews and buy pay per click advertisement to show up everywhere. My advice, stay away.
| Easy Rent Pro |
Cheap, the developer means well but the system and the network are too weak to support even a small business in the industry. This is a one person operation.