Diverse Enterprise product portfolio reflects changing fleet needs

The vehicle rental market has changed significantly over the past few years, with fleets looking for much more than just a car, van or truck on short-term hire.

Enterprise’s recent rebrand to Enterprise Mobility reflected this changing market place, as it looks to highlight its full portfolio of services under a new corporate identity.

Joanne Vickers (pictured below), head of European fleet and leasing sales at Enterprise, says: “Rental remains a really key service for our fleet and business customers, across both cars and commercial.”

“We’ve always wanted to listen to our customers, understand what they want and provide great service,” Joanne Vickers, Enterprise

Its mobility portfolio has been built around customer needs, whether that’s wanting to decarbonise fleet operations, catering for hybrid working and dealing with clean air zones (CAZs), such as London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ).

“There’s a variety of mobility products that we have in the portfolio that enable us to solve customer’s challenges in ways that perhaps we wouldn’t have done 20 years ago,” says Vickers.

“I think it's exciting. It’s a fantastic time to be in the sector.

“We’ve always wanted to listen to our customers, understand what they want and provide great service.”

Good customer service is central to the Enterprise offering, explains Vickers. “We don’t task our account management team to rent more cars to our customers,” she says. “We task our account management team to solve our customers problems.

“We see ourselves as part of our customer’s business. We're an extension of that team; we're not just a supplier.”

Currently, more than 95% of Enterprise's business is fleet/corporate and less than 5% is retail.

Vickers continues: “The other thing that we’ve really worked on, and we have some great technological partnerships in our business, is making sure customers are working, not waiting.

“So that moment that your vehicle goes off the road, that’s where the strength of our network and the strength of our people really comes into play.

“The fact that there is an Enterprise branch, so close to so many members of the population means that when your vehicle that you need for your core business purpose goes down, Enterprise can step in, and you can continue to serve your end-user customer with minimum disruption to your business and to your employees.”

Enterprise has more than 450 branches, with 30 either new to the network or upgraded this year; 28 Flex-E-Rent specialist commercial vehicle depots and more than 1,200 Enterprise Car Club vehicles available 24/7 on-streets around the UK.

Enterprise also has almost 150,000 vehicles on its rental fleet, including 77,000-plus cars, 2,000 car club vehicles, and 70,000-plus commercial vehicles, consisting of more than 60,000 vans as well as specialist vehicles, HGVs, refrigeration units, buggies, quadbikes, and bespoke, built-to-order vehicles.

Vehicle supply

Last year, Fleet News reported how a dramatic decline in the supply of new cars to the daily rental sector, coupled with a growing demand for vehicles, had left fleets facing last-minute cancellations and difficulty accessing short-term hires. 

A global shortage of semiconductors, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, was blamed for the squeeze in new car supply.

However, Enterprise’s relentless focus on vehicle availability helped it win the Rental Company of the Year title at this year’s Fleet News Awards – it’s sixth win in seven years.

It introduced a range of improvements to keep businesses mobile during disruption to the supply chain, including redeploying its entire vehicle remarketing team into vehicle acquisition, successfully expanding its fleet by thousands of vehicles.

“Enterprise always takes a really long-term view,” Vickers explains. “We have partnered with our customers for the long term, and we also partner with our manufacturers for the long term.

“Has the market been a challenge? Yes. Have our strong relationships with our customers and our business partners helped us? Yes.”

Vickers also highlighted how the vehicle rental company funds its fleet has also proved advantageous. “We outright purchase a significant proportion of our own fleet so that enables us to make decisions about what we do to support our customers in terms of that cycle,” she says.

“If you have a contract with Enterprise or contracted volume, we have done everything that we can to honour that. Not to say that our retail customers aren’t important. They are important, every customer is important.”

Vehicles have been kept on fleet for longer and even nearly new vehicles were sourced from dealer partners to fill the gap.

“I’ve always been really honest with our customers, if you don’t have a contract with us, and times are easy, that’s fine, we will rent you a car when it’s available,” says Vickers.

“However, when it comes to a time of shortage, we will prioritise the customers who have a contract will get a car first.

“That doesn’t mean our vehicle acquisitions team not working their cotton socks off to get more vehicles. But making sure that our customers, who are our customers year in year out, are well looked after is incredibly important to Enterprise.”

Changing market

Having worked for Enterprise for almost two decades, Vickers says that the rental market has changed significantly over the years and Enterprise has adapted it offering accordingly.

Its Enterprise Travel Direct (ETD) booking and compliance management platform, for example, allows employees to compare mobility options and find the most cost-effective and accessible mode of transport that complies with their company’s travel policy.

Updated last year, ETD is now fully compliant with the latest accreditation for online accessibility for people with disabilities.

It now has text alternatives for non-text content, functionality for input devices other than keyboards and easier site navigation.

It also works with screen readers for colour-blind drivers and is more accessible for organisations that use rental booking teams.

Furthermore, Enterprise has now made the platform fully mobile responsive, allowing renters to locate and book nearby available rental or car club vehicles through the platform on their mobile device.

Meanwhile, in-branch technology geo locates vehicles in real time and provides every branch with visibility of both daily rental and car club availability.

Branches can now also advise customers when a car club is the best choice for a business trip based on their location – especially last-minute bookings.

Furthermore, it has invested in excess of £1 million in new equipment to reduce commercial vehicle downtime, helping to keep customers on the road and boosting its in-house workshop capability by 30%.

“We have tools that enables our customers to look at the journey that their employees are doing and make the best choices in the interest of their business,” says Vickers.

“That can be a combination of price and distance, but increasingly we also see customers considering the environment in their journey planning.”

Enterprise also works with fleet customers to help them understand where they can electrify operations.  

Vickers explains: “We work very closely with organisations to actually understand travel patterns and the customer's travel behaviour so we can say these vehicles will be suitable as an EV and these vehicles might be more challenging for you.

“When you're trying to make that decarbonisation switch, you need to understand what’s right for your business and that’s where Enterprise can play a really good role, because we can provide you with a number of EVs on mid-term rental to assess vehicles.

“We’ve done that with both car and our commercial vehicle customers, and by working with telematics organisations, we understand the data of how your journeys go together.”

Fleet News Awards judges’ comments

Enterprise is a trusted support partner, as shown by its involvement in high profile one-off strategic projects.

It has a diverse portfolio of vehicles and is showing impressive results in each sector. It is leading by example in the transition to electric by switching its own company fleet to full-electric and is the clear leader in mobility services.

With the vast majority of its branches open 24/7, its customer-first model is a blueprint for success.

Sponsor’s comment: Grosvenor Leasing

We’re delighted to have sponsored the ‘Rental Company of the Year’ award for the seventh time.

As one of the rental providers on our panel, we would like to extend our congratulations to Enterprise for winning this extremely competitive category.

The diverse range of businesses, vehicles and innovative solutions showcased at the Fleet News awards reflects the pace of change within our sector.

With over 40 years expertise in the fleet sector, the Grosvenor Group is proud to be at the forefront of that change and our award winning, forward thinking 0Zone proposition has been helping businesses transition to electric vehicles to achieve zero emission motoring for over six years.

Our all-encompassing proposition which includes contract hire, EV salary sacrifice, specialist fleet management and personal leasing is supported by a leading fleet management system and App, all developed in house, and we continue to drive down costs for our customers.