Grosvenor Leasing has announced a shift in its strategic direction, as well as a new brand, as it prepares to meet the future needs of businesses with vehicle fleets. Lee Brown, managing director, speaks to Natalie Middleton.

Lee Brown, managing director at Grosvenor

One of the most dynamic eras ever in fleet management is spurring one of the most dynamic eras ever for Grosvenor Leasing.

The leading fleet business, which lays claim to the title of the UK’s largest privately-owned contract hire, fleet management and EV salary sacrifice specialist, has announced a shift in its strategic direction as well as a new brand as it prepares to meet the future needs of businesses with vehicle fleets.

The repositioning comes on the back of extensive fleet research that revealed the market’s continuing shift towards sustainable, flexible and technology-driven transportation solutions – the result of changing work patterns and the different behaviours and values of new generations, as well as environmental concerns.

Grosvenor, which has been supporting business fleets large and small for over 40 years and currently funds and manages over 20,000 vehicles, explains that the research showed younger and more tech-savvy drivers are poised to drive change, potentially paving the way for a future where flexible app-based, sustainable travel solutions will be used alongside, or even instead of, traditional company cars and grey fleet.

But managing director Lee Brown says the analysis also showed that fleets were looking to balance ‘self-serve’ options and digital solutions with the personal touch, benefiting from greater insights, advice and interactions from Grosvenor’s staff and management.

A new track to a new era in the industry

Brown, who has been with Grosvenor nearly 20 years, explains that the fast-paced change in the fleet sector prompted the research.

The rebrand is a statement that the business is shifting up strategically for a different style of future while retaining its core people-first approach

“Our last rebranding was 2007 and, 18 years on since our last proposition refresh and rebranding, there’s been a huge amount of change; in society, obviously the industry and at Grosvenor as well.

“In that time, we’ve launched Interactive Fleet Management (IFM), we’ve launched our salary sacrifice proposition. We felt it was time to refresh and make sure that our branding and the way that we portray ourselves truly reflects our two businesses.

“There’s two elements of the refresh. It was time to clarify the proposition and the difference between Grosvenor and IFM but we also carried out a lot of customer and market research and really dug deep into what was going on.

“And we could see there was a shift towards mobility solutions but we didn’t want to just quickly jump on that, assuming that was the way forward.

“We wanted to understand it ourselves and do it our way; we felt the industry was going very app and call centre based and we didn’t just want to follow suit.”

The research uncovered three key areas. These include an increasing reliance on outsourced fleet management as the number of dedicated fleet managers declines and roles such as HR and operations, with less experience, take on these responsibilities, almost as ‘bit roles’.

The study also showed increased complexity of fleet management due to health and safety, environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations, zero emissions targets, compliance, and technology.

Perhaps most interestingly, it also unearthed rising concerns among a changing workforce demographic, with declining numbers of driving licences, along with a more tech-savvy approach and an expectation for mobile app solutions for everything, including travel.

Grosvenor’s rebrand signals the start of its journey to tackle all these areas – while retaining its core people-first approach and ensuring its leasing, fleet management and salary sacrifice solutions remain at the forefront.

Brown says: “As much as this is a rebranding and repositioning, for us it’s the start of the new Grosvenor, a new track to a new era in the industry and, as we always have, we want to lead the way.”

Streamlined processes; same personal service

Key areas of focus include systems and app improvements. These will enhance the system/app experience, including better automation, market-leading functionality, seamless integration of products and services and freeing up staff to focus on customer interaction.

Having now extensively identified the start of a mobility shift among customers, Grosvenor will now also push ahead with service development. This will develop services to meet future market needs such as Mobility-as-A-Service (MaaS), car sharing and e-bikes, potentially through in-house development or white-labelling.

Brown elaborated: “It’s not like that we’re rushing into anything but it’s very much a statement that the business is shifting up strategically for a different style of future which will involve technology, different styles of mobility, but definitely underpinned by a personal service that we remain proud of.

“That’s the big difference in our minds; that a lot of companies are streamlining their processes and with technology, but replacing people with technology.

“That’s not the plan [at Grosvenor]. The plan is to streamline the processes and free up even more time for people to work closely with customers

“It’s a different nuance on that model.”

As an example, Brown points to Grosvenor’s recent restructure of its whole client support side, giving a greater level of support.

“I think that was a real signal that, during this time, Grosvenor was doing something to make the customer experience even better with people-to-people interaction rather than taking it away.

“There is big investment in technology and Grosvenor has won awards for its technology over the years and that continues to underpin it. We don’t want to be considered as a company that’s not forward thinking technically because our digital platform has always been exceptional.”

Grosvenor is investing a major amount of money in a new software platform for customers that will enable a lot more self-serving and will also launch a new app in April this year again increasing its portfolio of technology solutions.

“So as much as the primary focus is to improve our processes and generate efficiencies, it’s also important that we do cater for changing society and those who do want to use apps and new technologies,” Brown goes on.

The business has also committed to producing a white paper this year as well, which is all about ensuring that it stays abreast with developments in the industry, with new products, new services, new technologies, to make sure that it’s ready to support customers as they want to introduce change themselves.

Brown elaborates: “This is a moment in time that triggers a new future for Grosvenor. Rather than presume what people want, we carried out extensive research, which gave us a good flavour of what people believe the future look like. We’re going to continue to talk to clients as we’ve always done and steer the solution around their requirements.

“And we’ve very much done this with commercial vehicle electrification as well. It’s a new area for everybody, whether you’re a seasoned transport manager or a fleet company. Electrifying vans is a difficult challenge and we decided we wouldn’t just turn around and say we’ve got the answer. Instead, we ran a round table with commercial vehicle operators to get a better understanding so again we could steer our offering in the right direction, to support them in the right way.

“And that’s what we’ll do with mobility. We recognise that people will want to travel differently and they already are. Who could have imagined a day when you would zap an e-bike in the city centre and cycle across town and then drop it off and then go into a meeting. But you see in London and other cities all the time obviously.

“We just don’t want to jump too quickly and make the wrong decisions so we’ll continue listening to customer requirements and see where the priorities lie.”

He finishes: “This isn’t a case of saying our proposition is absolutely ready to go – it’s more a case of today marks the first day of the new Grosvenor.”