Fleet Logistics appoints Sue Branston to new strategic account management role

Fleet Logistics has opted for extensive fleet experience in the appointment of Sue Branston to the new role of strategic account manager.

Branston has worked in the fleet industry for the last 25 years, and was most recently sales director at Total Accident Management, where she was responsible for a team of business development managers and key account executives.

Branston worked with the accident management specialist for almost six years, prior to which she enjoyed a variety of roles with a number of well-known fleet suppliers, including LeasePlan International, Dial Contracts, Velo, GM UK Leasing, Hertz Europe and Innovation Group.

In her new position, in which she reports to Stuart Donnelly, chief regional officer for Northern Europe, she will be responsible for working with new and existing fleet clients at a national, international and global level.

Her objective will be to help Fleet Logistics’ clients develop to the next level in terms of the management of their fleets, while meeting the aspirations of a variety of stakeholders including procurement, HR and end-user drivers.

Based at Fleet Logistics UK’s Birmingham office, Branston said her new role would give her the opportunity to get back to the ‘grass-roots of client management.’

“I see my new role as working closely with clients at national, international and global levels, being innovative and entrepreneurial and being supported by great technology to achieve the aspirations of our clients and their stakeholders,” she said.

“Increasingly, that means working with a number of different internal stakeholders including procurement and HR as well as making the driver journey as complete and straightforward as possible.

“This is very much a hybrid role in the middle of the supply chain between the customer and suppliers, and typically involves a number of different conversations with a range of suppliers such as vehicle manufacturers or fuel card providers, looking for the best deals on behalf of the customer.”

She continued: “Fleet Logistics is a global leader in the delivery of fleet management solutions and a company I have known for a number of years. I had no hesitation in joining the business and look forward to working closely with our clients and helping develop their businesses.”

One of her current projects is working on Fleet Logistics’ new Invoice Control and Reporting campaign which it has launched for fleets of all sizes as a stand-alone solution. This provides independent corroboration of, and investigation into, a fleet operator’s invoicing and reporting functions.

The new solution scrutinizes all invoices, and validates them for accuracy and unit cost via an invoice verification tool, as well as challenging spurious invoices and using a supplier’s credit status to control the size and nature of invoices received.

The new solution has been shown to save around £50 per invoice in terms of processing cost and deliver a saving equivalent to 1% of the fleet TCO, with a return on investment of up to 7:1, says Fleet Logistics.

Donnelly said he was delighted with the new appointment and that Branston’s wide experience of the fleet industry would stand her in good stead in developing her new role.

“We think someone with Sue’s knowledge and experience of the fleet industry will play a key role in helping us expand our proposition in the UK and internationally,” he said.

Donnelly said that he wanted to continue grow the UK fleet in line with group growth targets.

“Our first line of attack will be to target organic growth with large fleets in the UK and across Europe,” he explained. “This is where our expertise lies and where we have built our reputation for creating optimum value over the years.”

 “Our second line of attack will be in providing fleet management services to fleet managers and third party service providers, with multi-bidding, our new invoice control campaign plus web-based real-time reporting to enable best-in-class fleet management and optimum value creation.

“This new appointment will help us in achieving these dual objectives and is part of our planned expansion for this year and beyond.”

Fleet Logistics, which is owned by global automotive certification giant, TÜV SÜD Group, operated a contracted fleet of 146,600 vehicles at the end of 2014 on behalf of corporate clients – a growth rate of 22.8% over the previous year.