A growing number of fleets are taking more control over decisions instead of leaving all fleet management responsibilities to their leasing companies.

Stuart Donnelly, international sales director of Fleet Logistics, said many fleets have traditionally outsourced management services to their leasing companies, but more are now using third-party suppliers.

“Many organisations think outsourcing is going to cost a bit of money and clearly the service you receive from the vendor is not free, but the reality is that outsourcing to an independent third-party specialist creates value,” he said.

“It can help you navigate all different aspects of fleet management so you can balance the best terms proposition with the best value proposition to deliver the optimum value.”

Donnelly said his company had found that instead of using a single leasing company to provide vehicles, it is often more cost effective to work with multiple leasing companies in a competitive environment, whether that is on a car-by-car basis or batch bid, although this depends on the size of the fleet.

“We have seen one fleet which moved from using one leasing supplier to multiple leasing companies save £40 per vehicle per month,” he said.

“Also, outsourcing allows a fleet to see what other companies are doing through benchmarking.

“A further benefit of using an independent fleet management company is that it can provide the expertise which will allow you to examine the number of vehicle manufacturers you use and what the benefits would be of reducing that number.

“It can also go to HR and get its buy-in that if you reduce the number of manufacturers significantly, all of your employees won’t leave the company.

“We have seen this done by a fleet which moved from 10 brands to three – two mainstream and one premium manufacturer – and it saved £5.5 million over the lifecycle of their fleet.”

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