The asset finance provider took the decision to outsource its system in 2006 when impending changes to the German tax laws meant that its existing system would not be able to cope with the new requirements.

Deutsche Leasing partnered up with global fleet software supplier, Sofico and selected its Miles software system for all its operational needs.

Benefits generated as a result of implementing the Miles system include an improvement in productivity that exceeded the original targets. There has been a 5% increase in managed contracts per full-time employee after 12 months, which grew to an 11% increase after 18 months and a 14% increase after 24 months.

In addition, there has been an improvement in the level of customer service delivered, as measured by “the manual interventions at invoice creation for large customers”. Previously, invoicing for major corporate clients required a high degree of manual intervention. Since using Miles, this has come down dramatically.

Michael Velte (Inset), managing director of Deutsche Leasing Fleet, commented: ‘Before Miles, our accounting department had to manually produce all invoices for our large corporate customers, who make up around 60% of our volume. Now we have reduced this manual intervention by around 95% because, through Miles, we have very different functionalities available,’ he said.

Other key improvements that were delivered included end-of-contract calculations for under- or over-mileages for all vehicles on the fleet. This was formerly a manual calculation but has become fully automated through Miles.

One key benefit of the Miles system that had not been anticipated was the level of reporting functionality it offered to senior managers within Deutsche Leasing, allowing greater numbers of detailed reports to be produced, and providing better insight into the fleet along with improved and faster decision making.

Mr Velte continued: ‘From our point of view, Miles basically contains its own data warehouse. There is a lot of information that we can take from Miles for analysis at the press of a button, such as profitability analysis at a customer level and contract analysis.

‘This is really valuable. We understand our customers better, and gain an insight into our vehicle fleet which simply wasn’t there before. This enables us to react to market changes better and enables us to make better business decisions,’ he added.