With the plethora of fleet management systems on the market, it could be difficult to decide which one is right for your company. Some systems and platforms are great for one fleet, but lack certain necessary elements for others. So how do you know which fleet management service is best for you? Brice Adamson of Enterprise Fleet Management is here to share his insight on ways fleets can benefit from Enterprise Fleet Management’s services.
MWS: ENTERPRISE IS A HOUSEHOLD NAME ACROSS THE COUNTRY KNOWN FOR CAR RENTALS. WHEN DID THE COMPANY BRANCH OUT INTO FLEET MANAGEMENT? DESCRIBE ITS SUCCESS.
ADAMSON: Enterprise started as a leasing company and branched into rental back in 1957. In the 1990s, we found a niche within fleet management. Since then, we’ve experienced organic growth, and our vehicle count is over 500,000 vehicles with 10,000 clients in the US and Canada. We have recently been named the largest fleet management company in the US, and our growth continues even despite the current challenging environment due to the pandemic.
In the early days of the pandemic, business owners were unsure of the pandemic’s impact on their customers, employees, and business as a whole. Thankfully almost all our clients are in essential services, and their businesses recovered quickly. Through the pandemic, these businesses have grown and become even more robust as the pandemic lingers on. Their need for vehicles is unprecedented; we’ve never seen demand for vehicles as we have right now. We’re not able to get the number of vehicles that our clients want due to the supply chain.
I think about how the pandemic has impacted Enterprise as it relates to our clients, but then also our employees. I’m thankful for the flexibility our employees have shown over the course of the pandemic. We were able to equip them to work from home and have since maintained a work-from-home environment, and business has done well. Our employees have been flexible and resilient during these challenging times.
MWS: WHAT SETS ENTERPRISE FLEET MANAGEMENT APART FROM OTHER FLEET MANAGEMENT SERVICES?
ADAMSON: The core is the affiliation with Enterprise Holdings, a leading provider of mobility solutions. Through that affiliation, we’re able to leverage a comprehensive portfolio of transportation solutions. In addition to corporate fleet management, we have car rental and carsharing services, truck rental, retail car sales, and a vehicle-subscription service. So no matter what transportation challenges our customers face, we have an innovative solution to meet their needs.
We also have access to the Enterprise Holdings resale channel who are some of the best at selling their own vehicles, and they provide that same service for our clients.
Another benefit is that we’re local. Enterprise Fleet Management has offices all over North America. Being local allows us to provide hands-on account management. We have Client Strategy Managers that are in every major market that meet directly with our clients to make recommendations to help fleets run more efficiently and help our clients focused on what they do best.
In addition, because of the affiliation with Enterprise Holdings, most of our employees come from the car rental business and have a background in fleet management and what it takes to successfully run a business. We hire account executives from rental branch management positions who have experience managing their own rental fleet. This allows us to offer intuitive recommendations based on what we know will work for the client. That is a huge differentiator for us.
Lastly, we also offer expertise that covers the entire life cycle of a vehicle including acquisition, registration, maintenance, use reporting, fuel card programs, etc. This experience helps us provide exceptional fleet management service.
MWS: ENTERPRISE FLEET MANAGEMENT IS BEST SUITED FOR WHAT KIND OF FLEET?
ADAMSON: We are a full-service fleet management business for companies, government agencies, and organizations with small- to medium-sized fleets of 20 vehicles or more. We help businesses create savings, safety, and drive business growth by optimizing the value of their fleet. With hands-on management, award-winning technology, and the infrastructure and expertise of Enterprise, we show organizations how far an exceptional fleet program can take them.
MWS: HOW CAN ENTERPRISE FLEET MANAGEMENT SERVICES BE TAILORED TO SPECIFIC NEEDS FOR DIFFERENT FLEETS?
ADAMSON: We work specifically with each company to identify their vehicle needs and make recommendations based on their fleet profile leveraging all our fleet services. We ask for specific information from our clients about their fleet vehicles: the use of the vehicle, its towing capacity, aftermarket customizations, and its build. We want to make sure specific vehicles for specific purposes can do a specific job. Clients might have overly capable vehicles that waste money and discover a smaller vehicle could make more sense for the job. Some clients might also have vehicles that they are overworking, leading to more maintenance issues, safety-related issues, and downtime. We consult with our clients about every vehicle to make sure it’s best suited for their business. This hands-on service we provide through our Client Strategy Managers is a real differentiator for our business.
For another example, sometimes people need vehicles for one season, and it might not make sense to lease a vehicle for four years when the business is seasonal. Instead, it might make sense to rent trucks for seasonal-based businesses. Another example comes from working with local governments. One county in California experienced high maintenance and repair costs for aging vehicles, making it difficult to keep up with the needs of the county. However, the county didn’t have the capital available to purchase new vehicles. We helped them explore alternative solutions, and we helped with maintenance expenses using our preferred maintenance and repair shops to help their fleet become better maintained. With these solutions, the county expects to save $2 million through their fleet program with us. Additionally in 2018, they received an award from the California State Association of Counties (CSAV) recognizing their innovative and cost-effective partnership with us.
MWS: WHAT’S COMING FROM ENTERPRISE FLEET MANAGEMENT IN THE FUTURE?
ADAMSON: A couple of things come to mind. There’s a lot of growth opportunity in this industry, and much of the market is still untapped. A high priority for us long-term is to focus on bringing in even more clients to fleet management who may not use our services today. And this has been realized over a long period of time. Back in 1993 when we evolved from a leasing company to a fleet management company, we had 30,000 vehicles, and now we have over half a million vehicles. We continue to grow even in these challenging times. Most of that growth has come from turning non-users of fleet management into users of fleet management.
Secondly concerning electric vehicles (EVs), we’re working with Enterprise Holdings to identify the right times and opportunities to make recommendations to our clients to migrate over to EVs. We’ll help them understand when it makes sense to migrate a majority of their fleet, a portion of their fleet, or the whole fleet to EVs.
Lastly, we’re always evaluating and investing in the latest and greatest technologies to offer them to our customers to help meet their goals. We’ve already invested tens of millions of dollars in our IT solutions over the last several years to deliver the best client experience. We’re excited to continue to enhance our capabilities. We’re listening to our clients through a client advisory board asking how they’d like to see technology evolve and how we can continue to support them. The client advisory board is made of large and small fleets, government fleets, private fleets, and family business fleets. We want to make sure we’re understanding what clients of all types want and how we can support them.
MWS: ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS?
ADAMSON: I’m excited about the future of the industry and helping our clients overcome challenges. Helping our clients navigate challenges in real time has been difficult but also rewarding. We want clients to give us their complicated situations and let us help them solve it so they can focus on what they do best.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Enterprise Fleet Management currently partners with Geotab, giving fleets insight into all their fleet data. Find out more, visit www.efleets.com.
