Fleet outsourcing: five reasons why you should embrace it

What are the benefits of outsourcing my fleet management and why should I outsource to Fleet Alliance? Also, what makes you different from your competition in how fleet management is delivered? These are some of the questions I get frequently asked.

Fleet management, simply put, represents an opportunity to outsource non-key operations to a trusted  and expert partner and enables you to focus on your business, safe in the knowledge that your fleet is being professionally managed.

So here are five reasons why outsourcing your fleet management to Fleet Alliance brings quality service to your business, reduces operational costs, and enhances your own company’s efficiency and productivity.

1. Fleet management expertise

Fleet Alliance is the UK’s leading independent fleet management specialist. We manage in excess of 30,000 vehicles with an asset value of over £1 billion. But it’s not the numbers that put us ahead, it’s the quality of our service recognised by four expert eye industry awards for service excellence.

You will receive a fully comprehensive management solution from us: we’ll identify opportunities for you to save on the cost of running your fleet, through an initial free of charge audit, which should highlight where we can take cost out of your business.

Furthermore, through our independence, we are uniquely positioned to manage your legacy fleet arrangements, to make it look and feel as if we have only ever been managing one fleet. That gives all drivers an identical service. We manage this through our Fleet360 fleet management offering, which will significantly relieve you of the vast majority of the administrative tasks, enabling you to focus on tasks that are core to your business.

2. Operational cost savings

Our fleet management expertise includes the competitive tendering of leases for every new car or van. This has saved our clients in 2023 an average of 9.4% of their lease costs and is the polar opposite of what a sole supply contract hirer offers, where there is no ongoing competition on rental costs to maintain the commercial tension in your lease costs. Our experience has shown this offers a sole supplier the opportunity to ‘rental creep’, because you are at the mercy of a contract hirer view on where they position their residual values, which can create rental differences of tens if not hundreds of pounds per month.

By contrast our competitive tendering puts each new vehicle out for quoting to a panel of contract hirers. We normally choose 2-3 suppliers for each panel to maintain the commercial tension on an ongoing basis. We currently have access to 11 of the largest and most competitive contract hirers to choose from, and a poorly performing contract hirer on your panel can easily be replaced with a more competitive choice where required. On a fleet of 200 vehicles the savings are regularly in the sum of £75,000 a year.

3. Greater fleet efficiency

Our supporting fleet software for your business and your drivers is called e-Fleet. It provides a dashboard of fleet management functions to ensure you can access a total overview on the state and shape of your fleet at any time, with reporting that highlights performance, compliance issues, as well as any areas of concern that might require our joint attention, with our strategic reporting shown on a trend and exception basis, for easy follow up action

e-Fleet also enables us to manage your legacy and future fleet in one place, so that no vehicle ‘gets lost in the system’, providing a smoother transition experience than you would get by choosing another sole supply contract hirer. Every driver, including your legacy drivers get to experience the same outstanding service levels. It’s magically as if this has only ever been one fleet once Fleet Alliance assumes the management.

Drivers also have access to our award-winning e-Fleet mobile app. e-Fleet mobile features the contact details for each driver’s car – whatever the contract hirer – so items such as servicing, maintenance, tyre replacement, breakdown become driver self-serve functions, removing most of the mundane tasks associated with running a fleet from your colleagues. It means less time working on your fleet and more time focusing on your business objectives, with you only needing to manage us for contract & supplier performance.

4. Focus on your business, while we take care of the rest

Employing a proven industry specialist, like Fleet Alliance,  and outsourcing your fleet management frees up your employee resource to focus on your company’s core activity, improving business productivity and underlying profitability. It also helps to streamline processes and systemise many of the day-to-day activities associated with fleet, which enhances your efficiency.

5. Drive your ESG agenda forward

Fleet Alliance is dedicated to helping our client fleets decarbonise, reduce costs, and support their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. You can benefit from our experience in this area – our own fleet went fully electric in 2022 having started the process in 2018 – and through the process of in-depth audit, we have assisted many companies to electrify.

We also offer you, a significant employee benefit of electric car salary sacrifice, providing the advantage of an electric car to all staff at a lower cost than if they were to lease an electric car on a personal agreement, delivering even greater ESG benefits. For many employees, the tax-efficient benefit of salary sacrifice is better than a salary increase, meaning lower PAYE tax is paid by your employee, reduced National Insurance payments for you and your employee, whilst the driver also benefits from the lower running costs for servicing, maintenance and fuelling of electric cars.

In summary, in a dynamic market that is continually evolving and experiencing supply-side challenges and changes of legislation, you need an independent expert to help you navigate your way through administering and managing your fleet. We are a recognised and award-winning leader in this field. Book a call with me today for a chat about your fleet outsourcing requirements.

Looking for class-leading service with a personal touch?

Book an appointment with Rob Wentworth-James