In today’s scenario, bike rental software is a useful tool for a bike rental business owner to track and manage their customer’s bookings in a smart way. This helps them focus on other tangible aspects of customer care and their satisfaction. 

A decade ago, the same service functioned differently. Business owners micro-managed the whole process or hired staff to manage everything from customers, bookings, contracts to the inventory with spreadsheets, and lots of data to handle at a time. Now, there is a growing demand for bike rentals in major cities, not just as a daily commute but also as a value-added service in the tourism sector.

To offer a personalized service to the customers, and to be on par with the competitors, a service provider in this segment needs to have the right tools along with the right people to manage those tools. While the is a significant investment that will take your business a long way, ensuring that you hire the right developer or team to manage the software will help achieve the desired results.

As a business owner or recruiter, how do you evaluate a developer and hire the right person for the task? Here are some important tips to look out for in a bike rental software developer.

Flexibility 

A flexible developer with the demonstrated knowledge and experience in different programming languages, tools & technologies like AI and analytics.

The broader and stronger their technical expertise, the better are your chances to end up with the right person to manage your bike rental software. The developer should not only be able to create new code but has to be ready to take over old enhancements to make your bike rental system more agile and competent.

Technical Expertise 

As mentioned above, the developer should be able to create different modules that integrate well with each other to form a cohesive product. Discuss the various features the software will contain and explain your requirements to the developer you chose to work with.

In this case, the key areas you need to test the developer’s expertise would be,

• Inventory/ Asset management –This gives the entire picture of the inventory you have and its features, categories, condition, servicing, and the location at any given point to use it to its full potential.
• Software Integration –This module ensures integration with external systems such as mapping software, GPS, payment systems, accounting software, etc.
• Rental and Booking management –An essential module that deals with customer data, reservations, pricing, rental agreements, communication, scheduling, tracking, cancellations or modifications, and so on.
• Reporting and Analysis –Keeping a tab on the real-time issues that come up regularly like those related to booking, rental agreements, billing, and so on is vital. Elaborate reports on several aspects of the business like inventory, usage, income, credit, mileage, etc. help in quick and efficient analysis, decision making, and keep your business on track. Time is of the essence, and these processes are quickly done through this module.

Domain Knowledge

Enquire about the knowledge and understanding the developer has regarding the rental domain.

The developer should possess a creative mind to understand the process from a user’s perspective, and the skill sets to develop useful modular codes that function well together. Any past experiences and projects of a similar nature would be a plus.

Problem-solving Capabilities 

Present genuine challenges to them because an experienced developer would have a quick problem-solving capacity.

Prepare some real-time scenarios as questions and see how they respond to it or ask them what could go wrong, and how would they fix it? There will be moments where the software needs quick troubleshooting – a module doesn’t function as anticipated, or an unexpected error pops up in the code, and that is when their true skills need to come into the picture and save the day.

Performance Tracking  

While there are various factors to be considered when evaluating the performance of a developer, the one that concerns business owners the most is the tradeoff between cost and time taken to deliver the overall project.

The quality and quantity of each task at different stages must be deliberated like programming, development, testing, performance enhancement of the software, and troubleshooting to evaluate reasonably.

Conclusion

Meeting the needs of customers and keeping them satisfied is fundamental to any successful business. Hiring a good software developer is one of the most crucial factors that influence the survival of your bike rental business today. There is a continuous need to keep enhancing your software from time to time to keep up with trends, demands, and competitors. Following the tips mentioned in this blog will make sure that you invest in the right resource for the long road ahead.

Read other useful blogs from us to understand how to stay ahead of the game for your bike rental business.