A fleet management company that managed to grow in the recession certainly warrants further examination. At a time when new car sales in Ireland were falling through the floor LeasePlan Ireland managed to grow in terms of both vehicle numbers on the road and turnover.
According to LeasePlan chief executive Sharon O’Buachalla this strong performance was due to a number of factors including an innovative approach to customer relationships and access to finance. “We grew significantly during the recession,” she says.
“We are actually a bank and have access to funding. LeasePlan Bank was able to go out to the market and get funding at a time when the domestic banks couldn’t. That enabled us to grow our fleet to 17,000 vehicles.”
That wasn’t the only reason though. “We had to open up our business to SMEs and smaller fleets”, O’Buachalla explains. “We also worked with our existing clients to help them work through their problems. Sometimes that involved extending leases to three, four or five years.
“We might have changed the class of new cars when vehicles were being changed, or moved from petrol to diesel model. This worked for our customers. We pride ourselves on our customer service, some of our clients have been with us since we started in 1983.”
Competitively priced
Those clients are drawn from all sectors. “Our clients come from the public and private sectors and include organisations like
An Post
,
Coillte
, HP and
IBM
right down to small and medium-sized companies. Our customers have fleets ranging in size from five to 500 vehicles.”
The company has also had a long and close relationship with Skoda. “Skoda now represents 9 per cent of our fleet. We are huge supporters of theirs. They are very competitively priced and fit into all categories. The Superb competes very well in the Insignia, Hyundai i40, and Mondeo space. The whole of life cost is very competitive and very appealing to fleet managers.”
Reliability is a key selling point. "We act as consultants to our clients", she notes. "We look at the current profile of their fleet, the use the vehicles will get, driver behaviour, and so on. Three years ago we put a couple of hundred Skoda Octavias into the Lynk taxi company. That was the first venture for us into that kind of business and it has worked out very well.
“The client was very pleasantly surprised at the performance of the Octavia and how it stood up to the test of constant city driving. It’s also got very good boot space which is important in the taxi business – it’s a great all-round car.”
Compete well
The client may have been surprised but it was only what O’Buachalla had expected. “Some years ago I worked as a motoring correspondent and I took a Skoda Superb around the Alps; I was raving about it afterwards. I knew it was going to compete well in the market and the same goes for the Octavia and the other models in the range.”
Indeed, the Skoda range has performed so well for LeasePlan customers that the company has purchased several for its own fleet.
“We have a number of them in our own fleet as well as for use by customers as replacement vehicles,” she says.
O’Buachalla was also unsurprised by the high ranking the brand achieved in a recent survey of Irish motorists carried out by insurance firm 123.ie. Skoda topped the list along with Mercedes for overall satisfaction with customers. Skoda owners were most impressed with fuel economy and cost of ownership.
“The cars are very highly specced right through the ranges and offer excellent value for money over the lifetime of the vehicle,” she says.
“That certainly contributes to customer loyalty. I would be very surprised if Lynk didn’t opt for Skoda again when it comes time to replace their fleet. Also, the support from Skoda itself is excellent. Skoda Ireland really does get it. They have a great dealer network and the support for customers is first class.”
The recovery in the economy doesn’t mean that the market is any less competitive, however.
“Fleet managers still want to get the very best possible value. We recognise that every company is different and has different requirements. We carry out an audit of the entire fleet and look at each segment to recommend what’s best for the company concerned.
“We also monitor the cars when they are out on the road to ensure that they are performing to expectations. In some cases, there may be issues with driver style or in others it may be that the vehicle is not suited to what it is being used for.
“We use sophisticated analytics to evaluate vehicle performance and this is very important to our customers. Skoda works very closely with us on performance and pricing data to ensure that customers are getting the best value.”
Skoda is only one element of the LeasePlan offering, however. “We are completely independent and offer our customers everything from a Mini to a Mercedes. Commercial vehicles make up 30 per cent of our fleet and we are responsible for the black Guinness vans you see out on the road and the An Post mail vans. We have leasing offers and vehicles to suit companies in every sector and of almost every size.”
