Effective Use of KPIs in Car Renting Business

Measuring Performance has always been an issue of concern for organizations committed to achieving their goals. Time and again, ideas and concepts have been coming up to tame the situation. KPIs or the key Performance Indicators have been the most influential so far and these, framed on a Balanced Scorecard have found their usage in almost every sphere.

The underlying fact is to develop an understanding of the operations and environment of the organization and settle on those indicators, which are most likely to reflect the milestones in reaching for the destination.

Some of the perspectives which can assist in coming up with an organization specific for the car rental business include Financial Perspective, Customer perspective, Internal Processes Perspective and that of Growth. Financial position can be gauged using the indicators like % increase in car rental rates, percentage increase in revenues, weekly car rental rates, etc. Customer can be satisfied by considering parameters such as number of booking channels, driver availability, vehicle availability index, etc. Internal process perspective takes into consideration KPIs such as average time of booking, percentage reductions in breakdowns of vehicles, etc. Lastly, Growth can be maintained with measures- growth index, percentage increase in fleet and customer base expansion index.

The basic challenge lies in allocating the cars in such a manner that neither is there loss of business nor is chaos created due to management problems. The difficulty arises because people may be early or late in booking for the vehicle. Moreover, the companies involved in this business also provide some additional services like 'drop- off at different airport'. Managing the core activities along with the ancillary ones ask for keeping a regular check on the way it operates. In this respect, appropriately designed BSC comes as a respite. Yet another addition to the list can be the soaring oil prices. Add to this, the desire and need to stuff the operations with the latest technological solutions. The industrial trends should also be tracked so as maintain the competitiveness.

KPIs are employed to ensure that efforts being made prove useful to the organization. In other words, just like 'effectiveness' is more significant than 'efficiency', 'evaluating performance' is getting all the more place than just 'performing'. BSC helps in attaining just that. One can figure out the problematic areas to be re-defined and corrected.

To sum it up, Performance Measurement is becoming all the more necessary as resources are getting scarcer and tough to procure. This makes it mandatory to have such a system in place. KPIs impart enough guidance to continue moving on the desired path. Car renting can be made a successful and beneficial activity with this concept. After all, satisfied stakeholders are an important constituent of a well-known business house.