Custom software for bookings and vehicle management

Project Overview

Services Provided

Bookings management, customer CRM, automated emails, reporting, customer portal, workshop fleet management app

A little bit about LandCruise Motorhome Hire

LandCruise have a large fleet of luxury motorhomes and campervans available to rent for holidays and breaks in the UK and in Europe. They offer spotlessly clean, well-maintained motorhomes and outstanding customer service, with optional extras available to fulfill every getaway need.

The Solution

Switchplane has been working with LandCruise since 2017 with the aim of removing paperwork, numerous spreadsheets, and repetitive manual tasks for administrators. We have created a custom-built portal to fit with LandCruise's precise workflows and to free up staff time to develop the business further.

The result is a comprehensive bookings management platform which streamlines office processes, an app for use in the workshop to track vehicle turnarounds, and a customer portal for the submission of personal information relating to the booking.

Bookings management

Switchplane has created a custom platform for LandCruise to manage their motorhome bookings from start to finish. The system is able to suggest which vehicle might be appropriate for a booking in relation to the number of berths and seatbelts, import customer details from a previous booking, and track all email communications sent regarding a rental.

Office staff have a dashboard to enable them to review rental activities, outstanding documentation and payments, customer-inputted data and requests for optional extras on a booking, which gives them actionable oversights to manage the day-to-day running of the business.

In addition to tracking customer information on rentals, administrators can also monitor the vehicles held within the company with regards to their mileage and MOT expiry dates. Purchase and service documents can be stored against a vehicle in order to provide a full history when it comes to the sale of that motorhome.

Customer CRM

Customers' details are logged from their first enquiry and information is filled out on their rental as the process progresses. This includes time sensitive steps in the process, such as gathering driving licence information for DVLA and insurance purposes, adding additional hirer information, prompting customer payments and missing details, and equally providing customers with information about their rental at the appropriate times.

Automated emails

A lot of administrator time was spent sending customers reminders and advisory emails about their bookings. We've removed these unnecessary repetitive tasks by automating a significant amount of email correspondence so that the system sends out information to customers on driving abroad, on the vehicle and hire procedures, and acknowledgements of payments and adjustments. The system is additionally able to prompt customers for payments, personal details, and documents, should these be outstanding.

Logs are automatically created of all outgoing email from the system so that there is a full record of correspondence with the customer.

Reporting

As the custom software system inevitably holds a lot of useful rental, vehicle and business management data, we have created a number of reports to assist staff in the analysis of this.

In addition to reports on upcoming rentals, there are financial reports enabling staff to drill down on bookings and takings, workshop reports to assist staff with preparing vehicles in accordance with rental requirements, and vehicle reports which store details of the vehicle for administration and insurance purposes. Reporting is an area that will continue to grow over the forthcoming months and years, as more data is accumulated.

Customer portal

In order to streamline the booking process and to eliminate the need for paper copies of booking forms to be sent to customers, completed, returned by post, then manually inputted to the system, a customer portal has been created.

Upon booking, customers acquire access to a portal which allows them to accept terms and conditions, add necessary information and documents, add additional drivers, and request optional extras for their booking. Information added via the customer portal is reviewed by the office team for accuracy/availability and added to their rental record.

This provides a significant time saving for both administrators and customers, as we have removed all paper-based booking forms from the process.

Workshop fleet management app

As information needs to be shared between office staff and the workshop in order to prepare for a rental, Switchplane has built a custom app for tablets and phones that streamlines this process and eases communications between various buildings on site.

Workshop staff use the app to find a vehicle, check it in upon return, track the cleaning and preparation process, then mark the vehicle as ready so that office staff know that a motorhome can be let as soon as a customer arrives.

The app will be further developed to record mileage and damage on a vehicle, and to assist with the check in/check out process.

The Future

LandCruise's custom software has developed significantly over the past few years and is continuously being improved and new features are being added - this is notably thanks to the flexible Agile development process being well-embraced by the LandCruise team. This has enabled the company director to prioritise features and change the direction of development according to business need and in line with both staff and customer demands.

The Agile way of working has also meant that the system has been actively used for a significant proportion of the development time to date, which has generated highly useful feedback from this early staff involvement.

We envisage further work on reporting and improving the customer handover processes in the near future.