Choosing your fleet leasing partner is a critical decision. Whether you run just a few vehicles or a complex fleet of hundreds, your fleet partner can save you time, money, and stress. Our latest article outlines the key steps you can take to ensure you find the best partner to meet your fleet needs.
Step 1: Assess your Fleet Requirements
This might seem obvious, but it is a critical step to success. Before approaching potential partners, you should have a comprehensive understanding of your business needs:
- Fleet Size and Types: Identify the number of fleet vehicles and the types you require
- Timeline: A clear timeline for what, and when, you need to renew or replace fleet vehicles, ready to align this with suppliers’ availability.
- Budget: Remember to factor in items such as maintenance and additional services, including accident management and any vehicle livery requirements
- Sustainability: If decarbonisation is a business objective, prioritising electric vehicles should be top of your agenda.
Step 2: Research Different Potential Partners
Reputation is paramount when compiling a shortlist of potential partners. Checking for online reviews, testimonials, and case studies are always an informative method of research. In addition to reputation, it is good to research the supplier’s range of services and flexibility. Does their offering include maintenance management and accident cover, can they quickly adjust to changing requirements in your fleet and/or business? Multi-funder models, such as the one offered by Gofor, often provide extensive market coverage resulting in better lease rates, flexibility and access to credit.
Step 3: Evaluate Service Offerings and Technology
A best-in-class leasing partner should offer technology that enhances your fleet management experience. A fleet management platform and driver app will simplify processes and minimise your admin. The right technology should allow for outstanding one-to-one driver support throughout the vehicle’s life cycle, with features such as reporting mileages, logging details of accidents, conducting vehicle checks and easy access to the latest company fleet policy, all incredibly useful for drivers and fleet managers alike.
Providers should also be able to tailor their offerings to suit your evolving needs and strategic goals. Customised leasing terms and bespoke fleet policies should be well within their toolkit.
Step 4: Compare Costs and Value
While cost is important, focus more on the long-term value rather than the cheapest option. Ensure all pricing is clearly outlined, including leasing rates, maintenance fees, and penalties will help to avoid hidden fees.
Fleet managers should also look at the bigger picture when it comes to vehicle fleasing, and consider areas such as vehicle reliability and on-rad time, fuel consumption, and maintenance schedules. It's also good to ask questions such as what does the ROI look like for leasing versus outright purchae of vehicles? How does the Total Cost of Ownership compare between ICE and electric vehicles? These are the types of cost-related queries that a good fleet solutions partner will help your business to answer.
Step 5: Conduct a Supplier Qualification Process
When it comes to choosing tyhe right partner, due diligence is essential. Here are some key questions to ask when qualifying potential partners:
- Strengths: What solutions does the fleet management provider bring to the table? Whata re their stregths versus competitors in the fleet management sector?
- Vehicle Management: How do you handle vehicle maintenance, servicing, and repairs? What technology is available to support your fleet requirements? What SLAs do they have in place for supplying vehicles, for responding to driver queries etc?
- KPIs: How will you evaluate performance, and how will you know your business is getting value from your company cars and vehicles?
- Case Studies: Can your potential fleet partner provide positive evidence or references from similar businesses?
It is important to pick a partner who aligns with your company’s priorities, whether it is cost savings, quality of service, or sustainability. If you ask the right questions, you'll have more chance of getting the right answers.
Step 6: Test the Partnership
Before committing to a long-term contract, consider opting for a pilot project with a small portion of your fleet. During this time, you can measure overall service quality and responsiveness? You'll get a good feel for this by obtaining qualitative feedback direct from your drivers, and quantiitative data from monitoring your all important performance metrics.
Why Consider Gofor:
The team at Gofor prides itself in providing cost-effective and data-driven fleet management solutions. Our investment in technology coupled with a hands-on approach ensures our clients get a first-class, personalised service. Our model is built on adding value beyond just a transaction, taking the time to understand your business, fleet, and strategic goals - all part of our proactive fleet management solution.
If you are looking for a scalable solution with a driver-centric approach, contact the Gofor team for more information.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)