Ryder exceeds 100,000 trips by integrating our API

At a time when companies with complex transport needs are looking for innovative ways to deliver great customer experiences, Ryder still relies on our solutions to successfully meet this demand.

Today, Ryder has announced that it has facilitated more than 100,000 rides with Uber for Business. By integrating directly with our API (application programming interface), Ryder can request, manage, and pay monthly for trips. The seamless integration helps Ryder improve their employee and customer experience at scale.

A few years ago, Rich Mohr, Chief Technology Officer of Ryder Fleet Management Solutions, was wrestling with several customer-experience and group-wide efficiencies facing his organization. After careful analysis, it became clear that many hours were lost in vehicle transport. The team then prioritised productivity improvements for transport.

At the time, if a vehicle transport driver or technician needed to get to a Ryder or customer location, either a second employee had to leave the facility to drive them or a loan vehicle was provided. This effectively doubled the kilometres required to make a rental vehicle delivery. The same applied if a Ryder vehicle broke down and roadside assistance was needed. After weighing up the options, Mohr got in touch with Uber to see how we could help address his organisation’s unique challenges.

The Uber for Business team spent hours mapping Ryder’s workflow and transportation-related disruptions. Based on Uber’s recommendations, Ryder launched Uber for Business for selected staff at its 800 rental locations in the US and Canada. This allowed the Ryder staff to request and manage rides via a web-based dashboard and pay through a single monthly bill. They instantly noticed savings on the tolls and fuel costs they racked up while dropping off or picking up customers.

“Our customers mostly wanted to bring their truck in for a service and get a lift back, not a replacement vehicle,” says Mohr. “Even though replacement vehicles were a hassle, our staff had to offer them because driving customers home meant one less person on-site. If they did give you a ride, it probably wasn’t the best use of their time.”

After the initial success of offering rides with Uber as a service to their customers, Mohr and his team wanted to expand the service to more customers and empower all of the rental location employees to use it. This required a deeper, API-level integration with Ryder’s legacy systems such as billing and single sign-on (SSO) needed for security, authentication, and scaling purposes.

“We had to sort out the accounting side of things so our data from Uber could properly flow into our invoicing and CRM systems,” says Mohr. “The SSO integration was especially important since it complies with our HR protocols and makes sure employees can access Uber to request rides as soon as they start—and have it removed as soon as they leave.”

The same API integration they use for regular rides lets Ryder employees request rides for themselves. Uber’s API pulls the correct employee number from the SAP payroll system and makes sure the right Ryder location and department are billed.

Since the partnership began in 2017, rental, service, and maintenance managers at Ryder in the United States and Canada have used Uber for Business to organise transport for drivers and technicians to and from both Ryder and customer locations, resulting in less customer downtime and a predictable cost-per-kilometre structure.

“Businesses succeed with accurate reports. By integrating our systems with Uber’s API, we’re able to check costs by employee, region, vehicle lease, and many other variables. Examining the data in so many ways helps us get a deep understanding of where all of these funds are going,” says Mohr. “Now that we understand how these dollars are being spent, we can be much more proactive with our business.”

Through the API integration, Ryder has gained critical insights—such as the average time and distance of each ride—enabling the company to better allocate staff time and resources and be more flexible in terms of meeting customer demands. Metrics the team collected include:

• 100,000+ trips with Uber since 2017
• Total cost-per-unit reduction of 4.7% so far
• Average trip length of 21 miles and 30 minutes

“This API integration makes our application as flexible and powerful as the application services Uber offers, which can now be accessed from within the Ryder business process,” says Ramesh Sundaresan, Ryder Vice President and Divisional CIO.

Overall benefits include:

• Better productivity and time savings
• Less time away from core job duties for Ryder staff
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Ability to plan staff time and resources accordingly