Corporate mobility specialist The Miles Consultancy plans to launch by year-end an app that will offer corporate travel managers an aggregated ground transportation solution, the company recently announced.
Dubbed Mobility iQ, the app will assess transportation options including rental cars, taxis, ride-hailing services and rail to provide recommended modes and routes that can be configured by multiple factors, including cost and carbon output.
It also will offer the ability to add all on-demand transactions not pre-booked via iQ and paid for by corporate card, according to the company.
"In the same way that you can scan a receipt into [an expense solution], we will enable you to scan into Mobility iQ and then manage the policy, compliance and push all line-item data into your [travel and expense provider] for the user," said The Miles Consultancy president of mobility Stuart Donnelly, who joined the company earlier this year to manage the launch of Mobility iQ.
"It's one seamless digital platform that, pre-trip and in-trip, provides best-practice recommendations to people in an intelligent, dynamic manner to move from A to B for those locations," he added. "The most critical part is that you can steer travelers at the point of sale to choose the more sustainable and efficient form of mobility."
With the use of artificial intelligence, the app also "will know if there are weather events, traffic or train strikes, and it will change the routing, even in-trip," Donnelly said. He added that the app also can calculate parking costs in addition to a car rental and compare the total cost to a ride-hail. "There is a big savings potential."
The app also will use supplier and travel and expense partner application programming interfaces.
The first phase of Mobility iQ is scheduled to launch by the end of summer, according to Donnelly, and it will "help people understand the four Cs—cost, carbon, clock and calories," he said, referring to a trip's price and carbon emissions, as well as its time efficiency and fitness calculation. "It will provide a benchmark against [a traveler's] personal footprint. We'll send users weekly travel plans to help them understand how they could have traveled differently."
The second phase, currently scheduled for release in the fourth quarter, will give people the ability to search, book and pay for all ground transportation in one place, Donnelly said.
The app will be priced with two options: a per-transaction fee or a monthly user fee independent of the number of transactions. The initial focus is on "direct to corporate," but The Miles Consultancy is "engaged in discussions with online booking tools as a means to enriching their proposition to their customers," Donnelly added. "Either way, the data would flow into the travel and expense. It can integrate with existing payment tools."