Gregg Darish: A Company In Motion — Solutions For The Mobile Employee

Would you please tell us about the current focus at Motus?

Ini­tially, our focus was pri­mar­ily on vehi­cle reim­burse­ment, hence the name: Cor­po­rate Reim­burse­ment Ser­vices. Our pri­mary goal was to tran­si­tion com­pa­nies out of fleet pro­grams based on company-provided vehi­cles into a reim­burse­ment model. Our busi­ness model depended on con­vinc­ing a com­pany that they were bet­ter off shift­ing from company-provided fleet vehi­cles to reimbursement.

We have evolved from that model. Now, our focus is pri­mar­ily on our clients’ mobile employ­ees and ensur­ing our clients have access to tech­nolo­gies, ser­vices and solu­tions that will equip those mobile employ­ees with the best solu­tions to con­duct their jobs in the most pro­duc­tive man­ner. In fact, this evo­lu­tion has led us to rename and rebrand the com­pany from Cor­po­rate Reim­burse­ment Ser­vices to Motus, Latin for “motion”, later this year.

Does that mean reim­burs­ing employ­ees for the per­sonal use of their own vehi­cle or reim­burs­ing them for expenses they incur on the road?

Both. Orig­i­nally, our tech­nol­ogy plat­form was designed to cal­cu­late how much to reim­burse an employee for the busi­ness use of their per­sonal vehi­cle. By revers­ing the process, our tech­nol­ogy can also be used to cal­cu­late how much an employee should be charged for the per­sonal use of their company-provided vehi­cle. You can think of it sim­ply as putting it into reverse, it’s the same plat­form, it’s the same application.

What are the ben­e­fits of a fleet based on reim­bursed cars vs. the cor­po­rate pro­vided vehi­cles — owned or leased?

Reduc­ing risk and lia­bil­ity is the num­ber one rea­son why com­pa­nies call us. That can be attrib­uted to the lia­bil­ity and the risk expo­sure asso­ci­ated with a company-provided fleet vehi­cle. There are dif­fer­ences in the type of exposure.

When a com­pany pro­vides a vehi­cle, gen­er­ally the com­pany is liable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If an employee is out on a Sat­ur­day night, has a cou­ple of drinks, gets into an acci­dent, God for­bid he or she injures some­one, the com­pany will be respon­si­ble for that. Many clients have come aboard because they found them­selves in an unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion that resulted in them set­tling a sig­nif­i­cant claim.

A prop­erly run reim­burse­ment pro­gram sig­nif­i­cantly mit­i­gates cor­po­rate risk and expo­sure. It moves the lia­bil­ity of the com­pany from 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the com­pany pro­vided vehi­cle, to only being liable dur­ing busi­ness use.

Even if there is an inci­dent dur­ing busi­ness use, the indi­vid­ual employee’s pol­icy would kick in as pri­mary and the com­pany would be con­sid­ered sec­ondary. In other words, they would only be respon­si­ble for any claims that went above and beyond that indi­vid­ual driver’s policy.

If some­thing were to hap­pen dur­ing non-business use, gen­er­ally nights and week­ends, it would now have noth­ing to do with the com­pany what­so­ever. So, sta­tis­ti­cally, it does rep­re­sent a fairly sig­nif­i­cant vari­ance in the type of lia­bil­ity and risk expo­sure to the company.

What other ben­e­fits does your tech­nol­ogy provide?

Our tech­nol­ogy gives a com­pany the abil­ity to fairly reim­burse the employee for the busi­ness use of their per­sonal vehi­cle, or to fairly charge for the per­sonal use of a company-provided vehi­cle. That puts a com­pany in a posi­tion where they can pro­vide either as an option, where it really becomes noth­ing more than per­sonal pref­er­ence for the employee. Our plat­form sup­ports both mod­els equally well.

When a com­pany tries to deter­mine whether it makes more sense to pro­vide employ­ees with a company-provided fleet vehi­cle, whether it be leased or owned, or to reim­burse the dri­ver for the busi­ness use of their per­sonal vehi­cle, there are sev­eral dif­fer­ent key variables.

What we have been able to demon­strate time and time again, is that if a com­pany reim­burses a dri­ver for the exact same vehi­cle that it oth­er­wise would have pro­vided, the com­pany will save $3,000 per dri­ver, per year, just by choos­ing reim­burse­ment. The bulk of that cost sav­ings is from the elim­i­na­tion of unre­ported per­sonal use.

How­ever, if a com­pany is accu­rately charg­ing for the per­sonal use of that com­pany pro­vided vehi­cle, the eco­nom­ics should end up being about the same. That’s why com­pa­nies have found it very excit­ing that they can lever­age our plat­form, our tech­nol­ogy, to cal­cu­late a fair and accu­rate per­sonal use charge­back for each dri­ver, each month, based on their actual per­sonal use.

Now, from a cost stand­point, with our tech­nol­ogy, even if a com­pany wants to pro­vide the option of both pro­grams, they come out about the same. They may tell the dri­ver, “If you would pre­fer some of the con­ve­nience or per­ceived ben­e­fits with a company-provided vehi­cle, we will give you that vehi­cle. If you would pre­fer a reim­burse­ment pro­gram because you would pre­fer the flex­i­bil­ity and choice; that is great.”

Either way, if the com­pany has a pro­gram in place that is going to fairly and accu­rately reim­burse a dri­ver for the busi­ness use of their per­sonal vehi­cle or fairly and accu­rately charge the dri­ver for the per­sonal use of that com­pany pro­vided vehi­cle, cost-wise, it is going to be about the same.
At this point, it’s more of a cul­tural deci­sion. There are still some com­pa­nies that are bet­ter off only reim­burs­ing. There are com­pa­nies that are def­i­nitely bet­ter off only offer­ing a company-provided vehicle.

It seems to us, that most com­pa­nies are prob­a­bly best off by pro­vid­ing a com­bi­na­tion of both. It’s along the same lines of, “does it make more sense for us to require our employ­ees to wear a suit and tie or does it make more sense for us to allow busi­ness casual?” Is it a JP Mor­gan cul­ture verses a Google cul­ture? Does it make more sense that we have the floor-to-ceiling win­dows and a very buttoned-up envi­ron­ment or does it make more sense to have bean bag chairs and col­or­ful trin­kets on the desks? That is a cul­tural ques­tion or a cul­tural dilemma for a com­pany to solve. We feel as though reim­burse­ment vs. company-provided falls into the same cat­e­gory. Cul­tur­ally, there may be one that makes more sense for your employees.

We under­stand that your tech­nol­ogy can be used equally well for company-provided vehi­cles or reim­burse­ment. But let’s talk in more detail about reim­burse­ment mod­els.

We pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cus­tomiza­tion or flex­i­bil­ity for the client. A key point is that we don’t tell the client how much they should be reim­burs­ing their dri­vers. We will pro­vide con­sul­ta­tive guid­ance if they ask us, but more often than not the ques­tion is reflected back to the client: “What are your finan­cial goals and objec­tives? What are your cul­tural goals and objec­tives? Let us design a pro­gram that insures both are suc­cess­fully addressed.”

For instance, if a com­pany is look­ing for a “richer” reim­burse­ment pro­gram, they can choose a series of para­me­ters that would pro­duce a richer reim­burse­ment rate. For exam­ple, they can base their reim­burse­ment on a more expen­sive vehi­cle. Or, they can base their reim­burse­ment on a shorter reten­tion period. Do they want to pay for their dri­vers to be able to replace their vehi­cle once every two years or once every five years? It is going to mean a richer reim­burse­ment if the dri­vers are reim­bursed as if they are replac­ing their vehi­cle more fre­quently. It is going to be a richer reim­burse­ment if you want to reim­burse the dri­ver for a $27,000 car than if you want to reim­burse the dri­ver for a $17,000 car.

Our clients rely on our exper­tise to select the right com­bi­na­tion of pro­gram para­me­ters, which ulti­mately deter­mines just how rich or lean that pro­gram is going to be. Most of our clients will have mul­ti­ple sets of para­me­ters. For exam­ple, they may say we are going to reim­burse their sales reps on an Impala, or its equiv­a­lent, man­agers on a Camry, and VPs on an Explorer. Clients tell us what para­me­ters to apply to any par­tic­u­lar group of employ­ees. We then cal­cu­late a fair, accu­rate, and defen­si­ble reim­burse­ment rate for those groups of employ­ees, based on the para­me­ters that the com­pany has selected.

Would you please share a success story?

I am proud to say that we have a long list of those. I sup­pose one of the first to come to mind is one of our ear­lier clients. This was a com­pany that tran­si­tioned onto our pro­gram to pro­vide dri­vers with a fixed and vari­able rate reim­burse­ment. They started with about 5,700 dri­vers on our pro­gram, which is a great-sized client. As we have inno­vated and devel­oped more solu­tions and more fea­tures on our plat­form, this client has read­ily embraced our new offer­ings and has typ­i­cally been one of the first clients to adopt some of the new technologies.

They had a pop­u­la­tion of dri­vers that were part-time, low mileage dri­vers and were using a Con­cur pro­gram to reim­burse those dri­vers on a cents-per-mile basis. So, we had to develop a tech­nol­ogy that was designed for lower mileage dri­vers. These are dri­vers for which a fixed and vari­able method­ol­ogy wasn’t the most appro­pri­ate and we had a cents-per-mile solu­tion that made a lot of sense. When we rolled that out, they imme­di­ately signed their dri­vers on and added another 10,000 to 12,000 drivers.

They also have employ­ees that are hourly and were using our tech­nol­ogy to clock-in and clock-out. In addi­tion, they use some of our tech­nolo­gies that relate more to gen­eral expense man­age­ment. They still have some dri­vers that are in fleet vehi­cles and are ben­e­fit­ting from the appli­ca­tion that cal­cu­lates how much to charge those employ­ees for the per­sonal use of the com­pany pro­vided vehicle.

They are a real suc­cess story, I think, really in two ways. They viewed their rela­tion­ship with us as true part­ner­ship, because as their busi­ness has evolved over the years, they have found that we have been right there, side-by-side. Because of our com­mit­ment to tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion, we have been inno­vat­ing in a way that has enabled us to pro­vide increased value to them over time.

How do you posi­tion your­self in the mar­ket? What is your edge?

As far as our edge and how we posi­tion our­selves in the mar­ket, we have really evolved to be more of a tech­nol­ogy com­pany and a plat­form on which we offer and deliver these ser­vices. We have talked a lit­tle bit today about the fact that we have some clients that are just on reim­burse­ment. We have some clients that are just on fleet, and they are using our tech­nol­ogy to cal­cu­late how much to charge employ­ees for the per­sonal use of their fleet vehi­cles. We have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of clients today that are now on a com­bi­na­tion pro­gram of both fleet and reimbursement.

That really changes the way we posi­tion our­selves and the way we mar­ket our­selves in the indus­try. We are not out there any­more try­ing to con­vince a com­pany that they should not be pro­vid­ing fleet vehi­cles. We are not out there try­ing to con­vince a com­pany that they are bet­ter off reim­burs­ing than pro­vid­ing fleet. We are able to take a step back and objec­tively guide our clients through that deci­sion, whether reim­burse­ment makes more sense, whether fleet makes more sense, or whether a com­bi­na­tion pro­gram makes more sense.

At the end of the day, we have solu­tions for any of those sit­u­a­tions. So, we don’t have any vested inter­est in try­ing to con­vince a com­pany that it is bet­ter off one way verses another. And that is a very dif­fer­ent mes­sage, as we under­stand it, in the mar­ket­place. We under­stand from the mar­ket­place and from clients and prospec­tive clients, that it is a very dif­fer­ent mes­sage. It is very dif­fer­ent posi­tion that we are tak­ing on this par­tic­u­lar issue, and it’s why, as I men­tioned ear­lier, we are in the process of rebrand­ing the Com­pany from Cor­po­rate Reim­burse­ment Ser­vices to Motus.

BIO

Gregg Dar­ish is the Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Motus, LLC (for­merly, Cor­po­rate Reim­burse­ment Ser­vices, Inc. (CRS)), an inno­v­a­tive and award-winning com­pany that pro­vides the lead­ing software-as-a-service (SaaS) mobile work­force man­age­ment plat­form. The company’s inte­grated solu­tion offers auto­mated vehi­cle reim­burse­ment, fleet per­sonal use cap­ture, expense man­age­ment, mileage track­ing, route opti­miza­tion, and time man­age­ment solu­tions for com­pa­nies with mobile employees.

Gregg is a nation­ally rec­og­nized expert on IRS tax law and account­ing reg­u­la­tions relat­ing to vehi­cle reim­burse­ment. He cur­rently advises hun­dreds of com­pa­nies, includ­ing many of the For­tune 500, on best prac­tices for man­ag­ing costs and com­pli­ance, mit­i­gat­ing lia­bil­ity and risk expo­sure, and increas­ing efficiencies.

An active leader in the busi­ness and non-profit com­mu­ni­ties, Gregg is a board mem­ber of Young Pres­i­dents Orga­ni­za­tion and sits on the board of sev­eral non-profit orga­ni­za­tions. Gregg attended North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity where he majored in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion and minored in Entrepreneurship.