Improving consumer access to ridesharing and optimizing citywide fleet management

RPC engineers designed, built and supported Car2Go’s automated fleet management system to better meet their global market demands driving 50% operations cost reduction and 43% customer usage increase. This translates to more efficient ways to position vehicles tailored to each market’s demand, less employee guesswork and time needed to manage the fleets, real-time insight into the vehicles’ positions and maintenance status and reliable data to make real-time business decisions.

Challenge

Outdated Technology that could not scale
Data Limitations/Reliability
Not Mobile Ready
UI/UX Design
Limited User Access in the Field
Vehicle to Software Communication Gaps
Efficiency Gaps at every Process Stage
Lack of Documentation
Lack of Agile Software Development Process
No Cloud Hosting or Support
Lack of Market Usage Knowledge

Technology

Angular.js
Node.js
Mongo DB
IBM Softlayer
Docker
Kubernetes

Services

Custom Software Development
Web App Development
Mobile App Development
Legacy Modernization
UI/UX Design
Data Science
Cloud Hosting
Development Operations/24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring
Security
Strategic Partnership (24/7 On Call Production Support)

Creating efficient fleet management & logistics software that operates flawlessly in real time requires expertise across several domains.

Car2Go provides consumers with Smart, Mercedes-Benz, and Mini vehicles and features via one-way point-to-point rentals. Cars are user-accessed via a downloadable smartphone app wherever they are parked and are a convenient option for inner city transportation where owning a vehicle might be difficult. As their operations began to grow to a global scale, their legacy technology could not keep up with their business needs. In a system where their users are charged by the minute, precise and reliable were required - as was immediate delivery.

After the project kickoff, our team began working with their internal resources and prepared to move them from a legacy Access database to an automated, mobile friendly global fleet management system. We tirelessly worked with them to understand their current system state, what their ultimate product vision was and the best way to create a detailed roadmap from here to there. Based on that understanding, we made a variety of custom web/mobile software development, demand prediction analytics and custom infrastructure implementation options that could work within their enterprise. After discussions with their internal IT department, we narrowed the tech stack down to what was best for their future scaling abilities.

After 8 months, we had our MVP up and running and started beta testing with select markets. Using agile development practices, continuous integration and deployment methods (CI/CD), we continued to test the product over the next few months before going live in our first 5 markets in North America. After confirming everything was working well, we rolled the system out world wide. RPC remained a strategic partner for 5 years designing, building and supporting 24/7 5 different systems that we eventually built out across the Daimler organizations that are still being used today.

Fleet Managers and Agents could now more efficiently service and relocate each vehicle to better serve their communities and better understand each market’s demand.

Let Us Help You on Your Digital Journey Start Here

Established in 2013, RightPlace Consulting helps companies run more efficiently by understanding and articulating each client’s vision for their business and then creating killer software to make it a reality. We thrive on face to face meetings and truly understanding your needs so we can put our engineering talent to work and come up with a solution. Engaging our clients in long-term strategic partnerships is what we do best.

Above all, our goal is to be transparent, dependable, personable and trustworthy. We love working with people and get excited about bringing systems to life that help your business run more smoothly and reduce the frequency of tech-related headaches. Our engineering team’s domain expertise encompasses the entire software development and data science domain – from business requirements to UI/UX design, back-end engineering, development operations, analytics/reporting and post launch support.

We are headquartered in Austin, Texas and are helping our clients develop practical technology solutions. Our clients operate at all levels of enterprise and in a wide range of industries, from Fortune 500 companies to startups. We approach each client with a firm commitment to return on investment and a long-term partnership built on integrity and trust.

Leadership

Richard Panter

Richard Panter is the Founder and CEO of RightPlace Consulting (RPC). Richard started his technology career by recruiting and building software and data science teams for many tech companies, from Fortune 500s to startups, here in Austin, TX. He specializes in building and managing software development teams and creating partnerships with companies that need support from high performance teams. Richard is now primarily responsible for software delivery processes, business/tech analysis, resource acquisition, agile project management, and managing RPC’s business.

He has been fortunate to have experiences supporting exciting work streams for many customers including, but not limited to, Daimler, Mercedes, Car2Go, and Southwest Airlines. His strengths include dynamic interpersonal and leadership skills, innovative problem solving and excellent communication skills, with extensive team building and successful delivery of enterprise software projects.

Zach Arrington

Zach Arrington is the COO of RPC. After a 10 year career in Finance as an Analyst, OSJ and Operations Director for independent wealth management firms and broker-dealers, Zach made the transition to Tech where he specialized in leading on-shore and offshore development teams to create cutting edge products across multiple verticals. Zach’s expertise and passion for client success doesn’t end with the delivery of a product - he has served as lead architect for several international Digital Marketing campaigns, all while serving as the product owner and development lead for FieldWatch, which became the world’s #1 application for Digital Marketing Compliance for direct sellers during his 5 years as the product’s owner.

At RightPlace Consulting, Zach’s tech, finance and marketing backgrounds allow him to deeply understand clients’ business goals and help them create efficient and scalable technical solutions to accomplish those goals, both during and after the development process.