iDrive - a greenfields opportunity

iDrive is a car sharing service based in Saudi Arabia. Set up in 2018, this innovative business established itself as an
alternative to car ownership in the 7 largest cities. With a relatively underdeveloped public transport network, Saudi Arabians have a range of transport options available such as taxis, car rental and ride sharing, such as Uber. iDrive is the Kingdom’s first car sharing service.

Mohamed Almoghalis joined iDrive, when it was founded, as VP of Technology. He could easily see the potential for car sharing based on the success of similar businesses in other parts of the world. With a specialist focus on platforms and integrations to enable business success, Mohamed was delighted when their original platform integrators suggested vWork as the basis for managing their ongoing car grooming and maintenance tasks as it gave them an easy way to manage this function and would help build
their reputation.

Wheels when customers want them

Knowing that their success would be based on establishing a reliable customer experience, Mohammed set up vWork to manage the three key tasks each of the 30 field technicians must do. Using the templated workflow, these are split into the following areas - interior cleanliness, exterior management, such as refueling, car washing and car maintenance and relocation (often to the local airport).

Each city has its own manager who is responsible for setting the daily schedule for the technicians. And to simplify the
daily task setting, each car has been set up as a repeating job in vWork – so that it has a full technician review every two to three days without fail. Any ad hoc jobs, such as a full clean if someone has smoked in the vehicle is simply slotted in between the other regular jobs.

As the location of the car changes every day, optimizing the routes between where the cars are parked will bring additional efficiency benefits to the team. The next step for Mohamed to do this, is to pull through the geolocation of each car into vWork, so that the City Managers can run
a route optimization each day. Mohamed plans on using the vWork API to do this, as the geolocation information is based on the location of the user when they use the iDrive app to lock the car at the end of their journey.

“We’ve already used the API to sync our key data with vWork - infact we had that set up on day one. And knowing how easy it is to use, means that we’re confident the next integration will be just as straightforward.”

On the road to success

With more than 48,000 members, iDrive has firmly established itself as the leading car sharing service in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed knows that there is more work to do to fully realize their business growth plans: “Using vWork, we know that our cars are really well groomed, inside and out and well maintained. And that they are located where our members want to use them. This means that our members will have a great experience each and every time they use
one of our cars. And this is a really important cornerstone for our business.”