With Northgate’s focus over the last 18 months being on making the organisation and its offering more efficient and effective, the operational areas have been re-structured from six to four. The regional sales teams for Fleet Technique, Vehicle Monitoring and Northgate Vehicle Sales have been moved into one national team so, whereby in the past a customer may have a visit from one member of each team, they would now meet with one representative who can consult over the best way Northgate can support their fleet needs.

Jonathan Pearce, Marketing manager at Northgate Vehicle Hire, said: 'While Northgate’s re-brand launched in May 2010, the operational culture of the business was still very much pre-re-brand. The centralisation of administration and finance tasks that’s been taking place throughout the last year or so has been working hard to change that and has been successful to date. The increase in our sales force reflects that and, despite difficult trading conditions, we’re confident the changes that have been made will result in positivity moving forwards into the new financial year.'

The rationale behind the changes in regional operations stemmed from a desire to allow the teams to focus on the three most important parts of the business: customers, staff and assets (vehicles). The current operational areas are now North (with Glasgow, Stockton and Bolton as the main hubs), South (with Southampton and Snodland as the main hubs), East (with Hull, Nottingham and Ipswich as the main hubs) and West (with Cannock, Milton Keynes, and Bristol as the main hubs). 

As part of Northgate’s on-going investment across the UK, £300,000 has been invested in its Glasgow depot, £297,000 in its super site in Grantham, £400,000 in a new site in Limerick, £500,000 in both the Snodland and Milton Keynes depots, and £1.2m in a new site in Cannock; all since August last year.