Fleet News Award winner: Best New Product or Service, Leasing Company of the Year - Arval

Arval has achieved a winning formula by supporting its customers, while refining and strengthening its existing product offering.

New products have included its grey fleet calculator, which scooped the best new product or service award at the Fleet News Awards 2011.

After identifying that grey fleet was a real concern for many of its customers, Arval spent three months developing the calculator, enabling companies to understand and manage the business travel that drivers undertake in their own cars.

It demonstrates the different costs and CO2 output associated with current grey fleet use compared to a range of alternative solutions, giving fleets the means to form a strategy for grey fleet travel.

Arval, which was also named Leasing Company of the Year, has recognised the challenges fleets face with rising fuel prices by producing a fuel reimbursement tool that models the historical and future impact of reimbursing fuel at HMRC rates compared to the actual cost.

However, the most significant challenge remains the need for fleets to reduce overall costs while also increasing operational efficiency.

Using its True Cost of Operations (TCO) tool, Arval is helping companies review fleet policy and identify opportunities for cost savings.

Fleet News: What’s been your focus over the past year?

Bart Beckers: In what continues to be a fragile economy, we have worked closely with customers to provide the products, services, support and advice that they need to meet their individual business goals.

Being part of a major international leasing group has helped us to do this and the ability to deliver the full range of fleet products and services has allowed us to take a holistic approach.

We have also focused on the delivery of new operating systems that will strengthen our business in the future.

This investment not only supports our product offer, it will translate into direct benefit for customers through the service that we deliver and will create a strong platform for our business.

These things meant that we have continued to see significant, organic growth in our fleet size. We have not only been able to satisfy our current customers but also attract new ones.

FN: What new products/services have you introduced?

BB: Our grey fleet calculator has been a major innovation for us, although this is not the only area where we have developed our offer.

We have created a range of new consultancy tools which help our account teams to accurately support customers in all areas of fleet.

Investment in our technology and systems underpins this approach and allows us to be a responsive business partner.

While this is not as visible for our customers, they derive benefit from it in the way that we deliver products and services to them.

These tools combine with continued investment in our employees to ensure that they are well placed to provide the best advice to our customers.

Expert people, supported with powerful technology, are particularly important in a climate where cost, CO2 and risk reduction are in focus.

FN: Tell us more about the grey fleet calculator and how it has helped fleets.

BB: Listening to our customers we knew that grey fleet was one of the most pressing fleet issues, impacting on cost, risk and emissions.

As a result, our consultancy team spent several months developing the grey fleet calculator, a tool that allows customers to model their grey fleet travel in a simple, logical and structured way.