28 May How do I simplify my international car fleet?

What are the challenges

You may be forgiven, if you had not delved into the murky world of International car fleet, for assuming that this is a fairly simple concept. Where a fleet in one country is very much the same as another, and that suppliers would be very similar and, if they were the same company, they would offer identical services delivered in a similar fashion, under a single agreement.

If, on the other hand, you have opened the can of worms that is ‘International Car fleet’, you will know that this is far from the case. Would-be similar suppliers offer different services, delivered in a different way, with unique contractual agreements from country to country. Should you have different or multiple suppliers in different countries, this landscape complicates further, and further still if you’re your products or fleet needs differ from market to market.

When you combine this with car policies that have been designed to meet local requirements with sometimes little more than a few common threads, or still worse, none at all, International Car fleet can look like a pretty daunting subject.

What are the opportunities?

As the complexities create challenges, then those challenges create a host of opportunities to make very quick gains. These can be in terms of productivity, centralization and hard savings delivered by good commercial practice and leverage.

In our experience, it is not uncommon to make savings of more than 20% across the fleet category as a whole, through getting a grip, and the optimal solution to get a grip, is to outsource to a specialist provider who has the tools and expertise to move you from chaos to control.

Using an outsource provider will create a single repository for all of your fleet information and in turn, provide you with information and advice on where the core simplifications and along with them, savings, are to be achieved.

In the longer term, it may be that you would want to negotiate and transition to fewer suppliers, with more similar products, and indeed this may deliver a good result, with the support of the outsourced partner to nail down the commercials to ensure the supplier does not take advantage of their preferred status.

Policy too can be re-designed with a single Global policy setting the ground rules for entitlement, CSR and the commercial basis for engagement, with local addenda to manage the inevitable local nuances demanded by legislation and product / service availability.

How do I act on this?

Our Fleet Leaders Guide: 7 Steps to Effortless Global Fleet Management, lays out a practical 7-step process that will help you simplify the management of your car fleet. Download it here

Contact Graham Rees if you want to discuss simplifying your car fleet management.