Xcelerate for Drivers
Seven drivers’ full days showed what the app needed to do
Combining two driver tools into one mobile app after the GE Capital Fleet acquisition.
The acquisition changed the brand, but the two systems behind it still did not work together.
A day-in-the-life view of the driver’s work
Instead of collecting open-ended feedback, I tracked driver activity across the whole day and mapped it against task types on a Trello board I set up.
Two tools, two interaction models
Two years after the rebrand, drivers were still using two incompatible tools built by two different companies.
From whiteboard to Trello board
The whiteboard shows the analysis in progress. The Trello board kept only the patterns that held across all 7 drivers.
Fewer phone calls
Reporting mileage, booking a repair, and retrieving a fuel PIN had each required a phone call.
Challenge
After Element Financial Corporation acquired GE Capital Fleet Services, drivers used a rebranded legacy app and a separate mileage tracker, Clarus Driver. The two were built on incompatible interaction models.
Finding in-network fuel and service locations and logging trips across two disconnected systems were ongoing problems for drivers.
Approach
Mapped a day in the life
Driver feedback had reached the team secondhand, through customer service and product managers. It was usually too vague to act on ("it works fine," "sometimes I have a problem"). I proposed a different method. I tracked 7 company-vehicle drivers across Before Work, Morning, Afternoon, After Work, During the Day, and Weekends, against task types (Travel, Communication, Pain Points, Administrative, Business, Personal), on a Trello board I set up. The board was designed to capture concrete detail and to show which patterns held across drivers, rather than relying on isolated reports.
Identified the main burden: finding fuel and service
The task inventory showed that the largest burden was finding in-network fuel and service without stopping to search separately. The findings also supported keeping the automatic trip capture from the legacy app. The design therefore focused on a map-based locator tied to the driver’s fleet card and a single mileage-reporting pattern.
Launched Xcelerate as the flagship driver app
The app launched with the map-based fuel and service locator and unified mileage reporting as its core features.
Outcomes
Xcelerate launched as Element’s flagship driver app in July 2016, combining fuel and service location with mileage reporting.
In August 2017, the service locator was expanded to include bookable maintenance and windshield-repair appointments through Firestone Complete Auto Care, Tires Plus, and Safelite AutoGlass, using the same design approach.
Drivers moved to a single mileage-tracking pattern instead of two separate systems.
Growth opportunity
Automatic capture solved trip logging, but classification remained manual: drivers still had to mark each trip as Business or Personal. Default classification based on time of day, frequency, or saved locations could reduce that effort further.
Key learning
Fleet apps handle operational data, driver safety, and personal data at the same time. Automatic trip capture makes reporting easy, but it also means the app records where a driver went after hours. Allowing drivers to review and reclassify every trip as business or personal kept that information under their control.