Emerging Enterprise, Runner up Project: Revenue Management System

The company that's more commonly known for EasyCabs also has several other lines of business, including one that provides car rental services. This business itself clocks more than 55,000 transactions per month and operates out of 50+ locations across India. Managing the revenue flow in this business is no bed of roses, as there were multiple modes of payment available for customers, which included cash, credit card, direct payment and float. Its airport counters mostly received cash transactions, while some corporate customers were on post-paid mode of payment. Some corporate customers had a float balance, for which Carzonrent had to intimate them the moment their balance went below limits. Handling this billing was fine until the company's business grew to reach 50k+ transaction levels in a month. As a result, the company saw that at least 1.7 to 1.9% of the transactions went missing regularly due to various reasons-branch offices forgot to submit the bill, duty slip was lost, credit card transaction was declined because the customer provided wrong credit card information, etc.

Reconciliation of accounts, therefore, was a nightmare for the company. This is when the company decided to implement a revenue management system.

The revenue mgmt system

The company implemented a solution to automate the process of collecting payments and monitoring each and every transaction. It was an inhouse developed solution, built on .NET and SQL Server. There was no rocket science in technology used. It's a workflow system that tracks all transactions right from booking till payment, and integrates all departments in the company, including reservation desks, dispatch, collection, operations, credit control, shared services center, and finally accounts. This allows the company to track how much billing has happened at the end of the day, how much of it has been collected, etc. All transactions that are not completed can easily be tracked. Moreover, since the company caters to large corporate clients, it has to cater to their requirements for bill submission as well. For instance, one customer wants the MIS of cabs booked by employee id so that it knows which employee took how many cabs in a month. Another customer wants authorization mails, etc. Carzonrent therefore has to incorporate all these requirements into the system and than finally integrate it back to their ERP system.

Cost savings/ other benefits

The single biggest benefit of this project is that it has plugged the revenue leakage that was happening earlier. It has resulted in a cost saving in excess of Rs 1.6 crore per year. The system has brought greater transparency, and of course like any other automated workflow system, ensures that alarms can be raised if a certain process is not being followed. If the company received 2000 billings in a day, but the payment has only been collected for 1700 of them, the system can highlight that so that the collections department can be appraised of the situation. For instance, all payments collected at the company's cab booking counters have to be deposited in a bank. The system now makes it mandatory for the executive to attach the bank deposit slip along with the bill. The system has enabled accountability at each business transaction level, and helped the company standardize on the customer experience across India.