PROBLEM: Smartphone development ‘essential’
The IT systems forming the operational backbone of daily rental providers face the challenge of remaining user friendly while becoming increasingly sophisticated, Epyx have warned.
Both short and long-term rental customers and suppliers are demanding ever more from such systems, the e-commerce specialists claim, with demands for greater flexibility and utility.
Marc Lees, Business Development Manager at Epyx, said: “In an ongoing quest to keep costs under control while meeting increasing customer service standards, the designers of rental e-commerce systems face a genuine challenge.
“The target is to create hire systems that offer an online journey that delivers all functional but compares with the best on the web, for both customer and supplier, in terms of ease of use as major retail web sites including Amazon or John Lewis.
“Generally, our expectations of online services increase all the time.
“We want them to be extremely intuitive while also being fast, attractive and extremely easy to use.
“This applies to rental systems as much as any other product.”
Mr Lees added that customers and suppliers now expect rental web sites to work extremely well on a wide range of devices, especially the latest generation of smartphones and tablets.
“This is an area that is now essential for any online system that is designed for the hire industry with everyone involved in the process demanding easy and effective mobile access,” he said.
Image courtesy of West Midlands Police, with thanks.
