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Volkswagen Group: reorganisation won't lead to cross-selling

Date: 19 March 2013   |   Author:

Volkswagen Group's UK boss Simon Thomas has promised that a large-scale revamp of the back-office operations of the firm's five subsidiary brands won't "cross the line" into the selling of vehicles from one manufacturer to the customers of another.

Vince Kinner, VW's fleet boss since 1996, will step up to the new role of group fleet boss from 1 April after more than 30 years as part of the firm's UK business car operation.

His job will be to ensure that all five brands - VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles - work with the same structure in order to implement back-office efficiencies in areas such as databases, invoice queries and management of demonstration vehicles.

However, Thomas told BusinessCar the company would avoid cross-selling: "There is work to be done to make sure there is a line of demarcation between the brand and the group - the brand retains responsibility for sales and service to the customer and we will not cross that line," he said.

"He [Kinner] is currently building the ship, and it may be another six months before we see him sailing it." Thomas also said that VW Group, which has similar programmes running across areas including customer quality and service, budget management and used cars, has been through "a lot" of approval meetings to get the five brands to commit to the strategy.

"At the first stage, the brands quite rightly said, 'what are the benefits and how far will you go?'" explained Thomas, who added that any of the five could opt out if they didn't feel the moves would be beneficial.

"They were looking for more support, better cost efficiencies, payback for customers and retailers and greater efficiencies, but they wanted to make sure they retain responsibility for selling cars.

"The two priorities are symmetry and synergy - you can't synergise unless you have a symmetry of structure. Across the five brands, there is not just a structural difference, all the processes are different; we have support for all five fleet departments coming from five different companies all doing the same thing."

The VW Group has been working to ensure the five brands have the same structure and job titles.

"It's not Vince's job to sell cars for Seat, Skoda etc. He is coordinating to make sure there is a symmetry of process, then we can all use the same systems," he said, giving the example of one VW Group brand not being featured on 1532 contracts held by others within the group.

It will mean any time one of the five brands updates anything such as contact details on the group's database, that information will be available to all five brands, which hasn't been the case up to now.

"For customers, I hope the only difference they notice is more efficiency," said Thomas. The one area VW Group is pooling its fleet operation across the five brands under Kinner is 'blue light' sales thanks to the specific nature of the sector's requirements.

Thomas revealed that Kinner could also be tasked with expanding the agency scheme already operated by Volkswagen, which deals with how the brand supplies the contract hire industry, with the intention of potentially rolling it out to the other brands.

VW has yet to announce Kinner's replacement as head of VW fleet services, but Thomas said the company has someone ready, as "there won't be a hiatus" when Kinner takes full control of his new role on 1 April.



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