Autotrip旨在通过“汽车互联网”来改变商务旅行

您无需成为旅行销售人员就会经历过里程费用索赔的恐怖。盯着Excel电子表格花费的时间，在六个月的会议上进行了扫描，并猜测您走了多远以及花费多少，这是许多高管害怕的琐事。

那是痛点技术创业AutoTripis addressing with its digital business mileage service, which promises to dramatically cut the time employees spend logging mileage expenses and increase the accuracy of claims by up to 20 percent.

The firm's transponder — a small device that looks a lot like a mini USB stick — fits into the "on-board diagnostics" port found in most cars to digitally record journey details using the GPS network. The data is automatically uploaded to AutoTrip's cloud-based software for employees to download and submit at the end of every expenses period. To protect privacy, only trips categorized as business travel by the user are viewable by employers.

But digitizing driver mileage is only stage one of AutoTrip's plan to transform the way businesses treat business travel, according to the firm's co-founder Alexander Nicholson. The business plan is only the first stage of a much broader strategy that will see the company evolve from a small operation focused on streamlining accounting practices to a smart business travel hub that uses artificial intelligence to optimize company travel and promote greener modes of transport.

"We will be accessing fleets by solving the problem of mileage expensing, and then we will be layering in additional software services that meet the needs of sustainability managers and wider EU targets for carbon reductions," Nicholson told BusinessGreen.

Because AutoTrip's data collection device works in almost any car built since the mid-1990s, Nicholson said the firm is in a "unique" position to collect vast quantities of business mileage information across entire corporate fleets to offer companies personalized advice on how to boost efficiency.

通过使用现有客户群的数据，Autotrip已经能够在同一天与不同客户会面的最佳方法为客户提供建议，从而优化了预约和旅行路线的顺序，以计划最有效的旅行时间表。

But the company has plans to go much further than that. It is currently fundraising on CrowdCube to raise cash for stage two of the business strategy — advanced data analytics. By analyzing the mileage data using "机器学习and advanced algorithms," Nicholson predicted that in the future AutoTrip will be able to provide businesses with tailored suggestions foralternatives to car usethat will save money and cut carbon emissions.

就可持续性的去向而言，是这些基本决定竞彩足球app怎么下载需要就如何重新设计舰队做出。

例如，根据舰队的使用数据，自动圈的分析软件可能会计算出，员工加入电动汽车俱乐部而不是使用自己的车辆更便宜，更绿色，或者可能证明员工使用火车服务更有效而不是汽车要上车。

"In terms of where sustainability is going, it's these fundamental decisions that need to be made on how to redesign fleets. And to date there hasn't been the data available to provide accurate decision-making," Nicholson said. "We're able to show organizations how actually we can not only save them money but make their fleets much more low carbon as well."

The lack of reliable data on how corporate fleets are used is the reason AutoTrip was born. The company was founded in 2014 by Nicholson and Andrew Wordsworth, the entrepreneur behind E-Car Club, sold to EuropCar in July. One problem they found when convincing businesses to join the E-Car Club was the lack of accurate, timely data that could be used to show the business case for changing the structure or management of a fleet, Nicholson said.

他解释说，多达20％的里程索赔数据是不准确的，并且用户进行旅行和登录系统时通常存在很大的时间。

尼科尔森说，这些数据是说服运输经理向目前市场上提供的更清洁运输选项的关键，例如汽车俱乐部，电动或插电式混合动力汽车。

"When you think about all the technologies available to create low-carbon transport, they are all there, and actually coming down in cost to a point where we can actually get them deployed into fleets," he argued. "The big missing piece is how to get the decision makers to understand that."

Eventually AutoTrip's software will be able to quantify exactly what the return on investment will be for each option, in order to clearly present the business benefits of opting for a greener mode of travel.

In essence, AutoTrip has identified its core business opportunity — business mileage claims — as a way of staging a data grab to fuel its vision of a responsive, highly efficient, green system of business travel. It seems this start-up is only at the very start of its journey towards the widespread adoption of green fleets.