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The UK's biggest fleet brand is looking to revamp its fleet business, handing more of the control of smaller sub-100-car fleet contracts back to its dealer network.
"We're trying to get dealers more involved as a resource. We need to give back some of the smaller fleets to the dealer," Ford of Britain managing director Nigel Sharp told BusinessCar. "With a lot of smaller fleets - single-point fleets - it's logical to drive the relationship through the dealer.
"They need consistency of terms, but I don't see why we shouldn't have more of a policy of letting the dealers get on with it," he continued. "I think necessarily dragging the manufacturer into the game for some of the smaller fleets is not in the customer's best interest."
Sharp said Ford will look to "migrate" some business customers over to its dealers from the fourth quarter of 2010, but the whole process of redefining how the company does its fleet business will take 12 months. "We want to improve standards not reduce them, and the way to do that is to give the dealers more autonomy," said Sharp. "At the top end we need to have a fundamental look at how the business is done, and there are no firm conclusions at this time." The options range from dealers organising the entire fleet deal, through to them being the delivery mode and just doing pre-delivery checks for a fee. "We probably need to be a little more inventive with how we set up the structure and the rewards."
Sharp said the Ford brand is currently in transition from the historic high-discount philosophy to one where list prices are lower, but the discounts aren't available any longer.
"We are in transition - we're going to put much more into what is the value of the Ford brand and substantiate that through product rather than just rely on discounts," he said. "It's an arduous path to follow as it's about more than just raising [transaction] prices, the evidence of that is in new product - the C-max and Focus."
The new C-max arrives before the end of the year, while the new-generation Focus, fleet's best-selling model, arrives early next year.
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