Enterprise Car Share: Creating the Perfect Application
Michael Pica, Nehemiah Torres, Manon Jokaleu
Boston University

Abstract
This paper will focus on, discuss and break down the Enterprise Car Share program in terms of the history and evolution of the car share program, the website infrastructure and security components, the marketing and advertising, the relationship with social media, and how the Enterprise Car Share Application will position them competitively in the current as well as future E-commerce environment.

Enterprise Car Share: Creating the Perfect Application
Background
Originally known as Executive Leasing Company, Enterprise was started in 1957 by Mr. Jack Taylor in St Louis, Missouri in a small office of a Cadillac dealership with 1 employee and 7 cars. In 2009, Enterprise became a subsidiary of Enterprise Holding, Inc. following the company’s 2007 acquisition of Vanguard Automotive Group, the parent company of National Car Rental and Alamo Car Rental (Biz Journal, ST Louis 8/3/2009). Today, Enterprise Holding Company has annual revenues of $16.4 billion and more than 78,000 employees, Enterprise Holdings and its affiliates own and operate almost 1.4 million cars and trucks making them the largest rental car service provider in the world measured by revenue, employees and fleet. The Car Share program actually started in 2005 under the network of Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s hourly car rentals. According to the USA Today, Enterprise has been renting by the hour since late 2005 when it started in Chicago. About 200 Chicago-area stores now offer the service (Yu, USA Today, 2007). By 2007, Enterprise was operating in 6 other cities in addition to Chicago including Washington, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Portland (Yu, USA Today, 2007). The car share program was high susceptible for Steve Groat, a businessman from Dallas, Texas who stated that “ A lot of his trips are fly in, grab a car, go to a meeting, then go back to the airport or hotel”, he says. “Most of the time, I only use the rental for a couple of hours.” In 2007, Enterprise hourly car rentals started the first car share program with 4 Priuses and 2 Ford Escape Hybrids at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri named WeCar. Through acquisitions between 2011 to 2013, WeCar was able to grow its car share program by purchasing Philly CarShare, Mint Cars-on-Demand, and IGO with 13,000, 8,000 and 15,000 new members respectively. In 2013, WeCar changed names to Enterprise Car Share to capitalize on the Enterprise brand and today is affiliated with 80 Universities and 40 Governmental and Businesses in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom.
Program Overview Here is how the program currently works according to the Enterprise CarShare website. The member can log into the Enterprise CarShare Webpage and create a reservation with his/her membership ID and reserve any of the vehicles in the program that will fit their needs. The customer will drive to Enterprise and use his or her membership card or fob so the system will recognize you and unlock the doors. The keys are already inside the vehicle so you can drive away. The program has extra bonuses such as 24/7 customer support while driving the vehicle, a pre-paid gas card to fill up the tank, emergency road side assistance and full insurance coverage. When the customer is done with the vehicle, he or she can simply take it back to enterprise where it was picked up so the next person can reserve it.
Website/Infrastructure
The Enterprise Carshare project is a fruitful regardless of the challenges of unsustainable fuel prices in the market. The project has potential success in economic development; the car share, its valuable sharing economy is rapidly-growing sector. Car sharing project are economically profitable; For example, a San Francisco-based car sharing company that allows other people to rent out your car at the airport while you’re traveling, announced $13.5 million series a financing (Harris, 2014). Moreover, Zipcar the biggest Carsharing Company has announced that the car-sharing market could reach $10 billion in North America, Europe and Asia (Kell, 2013). Most of its business allow people to temporarily use car for a fee where typically, and formerly, people would own it. The company provides a public platform based on car sharing’s cloud networking infrastructure, one of important for enterprise car share is requirements is the flexibility that should be given to customers and have accessibility to services being sharing.
Essential responsible for managing a public traveler’s carsharing system, enterprises carsharing ensures the network operations and compensation mechanisms between operators, as well as integrity and the quality of services being provides to customers. The management of carsharing operations are performed through cloud computing technological platform. This technology enable a seamless and transparent integration between operators and users, by applying the roaming concept to any carsharing models and networks and management tools. The reliability and security of the platform, were the main concerns of enterprise carsharing, because without it, the business could not ensure such reliability and security, the first interaction with enterprise car share control panel is excellent. Very simple to use, even for someone who is not an experienced user for e-commerce market could get access to it. The information about the prices is clear and displaced in real time. The Enterprise carsharing is the innovation program that deliver car-sharing technology’s speed, efficacy and economy sound business, universities and government offices, living communities throughout the United States. In fact, the Enterprise’s local car share rental service, which includes car-sharing, is an integral part of almost every community’s sustainable mobility and transportation infrastructure (Borughton, 2011). The interesting part of car sharing, is for many consumers who use mass transit during the workweek rely on Enterprise Rent-A-car for alternative transportation on weekends.
Internet Security Security is a major concern in internet transactions from both the customer’s point of view as well as Enterprises Car Share point of view due to the fact that personal information and payment information is being passed from the customer to Enterprise. Although the customer has a duty to submit the information through a secure system using antivirus or spyware protection, Enterprise has a duty to maintain a high level of confidentiality of data through a secure infrastructure, transaction security and data security.
Infrastructure
At Enterprise, we will transact all business using SSL or HTTPs secure networks using the wired broadband connections to reduce any sniffing or other unwanted hacking.
Transaction Security
Enterprise will provide all customers with a login ID and password and digital certificate to authenticate the customer’s identity and avoid any non-repudiation or denying the transactions.
Data Security
Enterprise will secure the data by protecting the confidentiality of the data by locking down servers, encrypting all transactions with minimum 10/24 bit keys, keeping credit card data in back end where information is secure. We will install Firewalls so we can monitor and watch internet traffic to block unwanted traffic and have multiple servers available to fend off any type of Denial of Service (DoS) of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to shut down the system.
The benefits of effective information security
Organizations implement information security systems for what they can prevent; downtime, intellectual property theft, misuse or destruction of data resources, expensive legal action, public embarrassment, as well as dwindling stock prices. Effective information security promotes business objectives and expand business opportunities. For example, effective information security enables the following business tasks: Online banking, online trading, online shopping, supply-chain management, wireless transactions, and access to remote mobile sites, in house database sharing with partners, and B2B, and B2C e-commerce. Essentially, effective information security enables organizations to conduct business in newer and more profitable ways in developing global marketplace [ (Secuirty, 2012) ].

Marketing
We are going to need to redirect our marketing strategy in order to stay competitive with our competitors. We also need to take a creative approach when thinking of new ways to reach the customer in order to continuously keep them engaged and build recognition of the brand through untraditional methods. See Appendix.
Target Market
This growth did not happen in random locations; our initial strategy was to be in well-populated urban centers, in /around universities and to provide services for public and private employers. Our acquisitions of PhillyCarShare, Mint Cars-on-Demand and IGO CarSharing verified and solidified this strategy.
The target customer base of our marketing strategy is broken down into the different services that we offer:
University – Universities and colleges are moving forward on policies to limit and promote alternate means of transportation. Parking is expensive and most universities would rather spend that money on instructional space or student housing where money can be made instead of lost (Van Heeke, Sullivan, & Baxandall, 2014). Millennials are driving less and opting for alternate means. This means that it makes less sense to own a car and instead makes more sense to have one readily available (within a car-share program) when necessary. Staff can also take advantage of on-campus perks.
Individual – This target audience are mostly individuals ages 24-35. They are part of the group that went through college driving less and now live within the city where they can continue their car-less lifestyle. City dwellers that live in condos or apartments may opt to bike, walk or ride public transit but occasionally need the added convenience of having a car available should the need arise. As population in city centers rise and land becomes more scarce, buildings are seeking at amenities that not only enable them to offer less parking spaces per unit, but also utilize the amenity of a walkable environment; a place in which the added expense of a car in not necessary.
Business – Businesses of every size can benefit from having to lease out a fleet of vehicles for company use. They can also have some available for staff for personal convenience. Target businesses are those with a staff that uses alternate modes of transit to get to work (walkable urban areas, along rail lines, etc.). By offering this option, they also afford employees the flexibility of not needing their car at work, but if by chance they might, they have one at their convenience.
Government – Government employees in all forms can benefit from this service. Most agencies use their own fleet service. By using our service, it can reduce their overall costs. Municipalities can also sponsor carsharing for the general public or for their employees as a way to encourage alternate transit to/from work. Organizations are motivated by supporting “green” initiatives that they may have set out for themselves.

Social Media Plan of Attack
Social Media can play an integral part in recruiting new members, retaining existing members and by properly engaging with our customers, we can be the car-share program of choice in markets where our competitors also operate. Google+, Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, YouTube & Instagram. Each local market will have a social presence to communicate with members. We will focus on pushing ideas and reasons to use CarShare; reminding members of the benefits of having the added convenience of a car whenever they may need it. Local market presence on sites will ensure that we know the right moments to target based on daily local events. This will also allow us to “pay attention to our follower demographic and publish content on each individual channel based on what appeals to them (daCunha, M., 2014).
Content
Content will be our key driver for customer engagement. We will create short ad videos in order to get our customers to connect with the brand and allow potential customers to get a sense of what it means to CarShare.

App for Mobile Devices
We will develop an app to enhance the user experience. Most of our customers/members have been reserving cars via our mobile site. With an app, we can offer specific information such as real-time car availability and locator, reservation and payment. App will use learned technology to learn customer patterns, sending notifications (with user permission) to remind customer of reservation status (i.e. “Only two cars left within 2 mile radius for 4 p.m.).