Prepared for the Future
Declining new vehicle sales, cuts to global production levels and price rises due to a weakening Australian dollar do not auger well for the Australian motor vehicle industry. Despite this, sgfleet, the third largest fleet management and salary packaging company in the Australian market, is showing no signs of faltering.
“We are well prepared for the challenges ahead,” says Andy Mulcaster, CEO sgfleet Australia. “Our fleet has grown by over 33% since June 2007 and by 7.5% in the last twelve months. And despite the gloomy outlook, new business levels for most areas of our business are pleasing.”
To that end sgfleet has recently signed a number of new clients. “Many of these deals have been significant sale lease back agreements,” says Roy Waghorn, General Manager, Corporate Sales and Marketing. When finalised, these deals alone will see sgfleet’s portfolio grow by almost 1,500 vehicles, no mean feat given current market conditions.
And sgfleet is keen to take advantage of existing market opportunities. “Rather than hitting the panic button, we have taken a more proactive approach to evaluating our business model,” says Mr Mulcaster. “We are currently in the process of expanding our national new business development team and are committed to achieving efficiencies while maintaining our core skill base.”
There is little doubt that circumstances outside the fleet industry will have a bearing on sgfleet’s novated portfolio. “Increasing redundancy levels, as well as delays in purchase decisions, will have an impact,” says Paul Jansen, General Manager, Salary Packaging. “But the financial benefits of vehicle packaging are unchanged and in a time when many companies are unable to offer pay increases, employers are seeing the benefits, both to their employees as well as their bottom lines, of offering packaged vehicles.” Underpinning this, are sgfleet’s novated lease protection insurance products, which are proving to be valuable in alleviating fears amongst novated drivers. “This type of insurance is quite unique,” says Mr Jansen. “There are very few major purchases where you can protect yourself in the case of redundancy.”
While sgfleet is looking to the future, the past twelve months have seen some significant milestones. During April the company celebrated its first year as sgfleet – the bringing together of FleetAustralia, SMB salary packaging and Commercial Fleet. April also saw the migration of almost 40,000 driver records to its new fleet management platform, DRIVE. The migration of these leases gives sgfleet’s clients access to its market leading analysis and reporting tool – Fleet intelligence. “sgfleet created Fleet intelligence so that our corporate tool of trade clients have instant access to all their fleet information,” says Mr Mulcaster, “critical in today’s climate.”
“While we are under no illusion that there are some challenges ahead,” says Mr Mulcaster, “we believe we are prepared.” Rather than being pessimistic, sgfleet has taken the opportunity to adjust business practices to ensure that it continues to work towards being the pre-eminent provider of fleet management and salary packaging solutions in Australia.
For more information contact:
Carolyn Taylor
(02) 9494 1000
ctaylor@sgfleet.com
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