8 | INTERVIEW
One-to-One with John Manning, Head of Ford Ireland
Ford Ireland has gone through some restructuring in recent time. What has happened and are there more developments to come? In particular at dealer level? What has happened is that there has been a reorganisation of Ford’s business across Europe and as part of that action, Henry Ford & Son Ltd., the official name of Ford in Ireland, has been grouped with Ford of Britain, so instead of reporting into Ford of Europe, we report into the Ford of Britain organisation. The aim of the change is to make Ford a more targeted business with a strong focus on growing, in particular, our commercial vehicle business and providing passenger vehicle customers with a more defined portfolio. This is a similar strategy rolled out across many Ford European operations such as our Iberian markets all under the wings of Ford Spain and indeed, Switzerland and Austria under Ford of Germany. The organisational change was coming into play just before the pandemic hit, so needless to say, our plans were seriously disrupted. But as business has started to get back to a certain level of normality this year, we are making real progress in implementing those changes and experiencing the benefits of the synergy and improve sales performances. These European wide changes are now bearing fruit for Ford’s business across Europe and we are on-track to achieve a 6% EBIT Margin in Europe in 2023. In Ireland, there have been some changes at the dealer level, but the truth is, for as long as I have worked at Ford, there have always been changes within our dealer representation as the company constantly reviews our business performance and the key requirement of staying profitable in the Irish market context. We continue to work together with our dealer body in a spirit of FLEETTRANSPORT | DEC-JAN 2022
partnership to build a stronger and more sustainably profitable Ford sales and servicing network for the future in Ireland that works for the mutual benefit of our businesses and for our commercial and passenger vehicle customers. In both the passenger and commercial vehicle segments, Ford has built up a loyal following across Ireland – no other brand can claim anything like the historic legacy that Ford has in Ireland, dating back 103 years, not to mention the origins of our parent company in the US are strongly linked to this country. We have a particularly strong leadership position in the commercial vehicle segment where the Ford Transit range has been king for decades now and is equally joined by our Transit Connect range and of course our Ranger pick up where sales continue to increase significantly year over year. We don’t treat that No. 1 position lightly, it is a hard-won position that has to be worked on year in and year out. It all starts with having a great product which the Ford commercial vehicle range has always been. We are moving forward with our plans to transition our entire commercial vehicle range into zero emission capable vehicles over the next 2.5 years so the future of Ford Commercial Vehicles is very strong . On the passenger car side, our plans are equally as exciting where we have just launched the all-new Mustang Mach-E, our first full electric passenger car
capable of a range in excess of 600km. This will now sit alongside our much loved Kuga PHEV with zero emissions capability for over 50km where both vehicles will be the launch pad for how our entire passenger car range will shift to zero emission capability in the coming years. Currently, our traditional nameplates like Fiesta and Focus continue to deliver in the market, not to mention the Ford Puma, our compact SUV which is proving a real favourite with Irish customers if 2021 sales are anything to go by. The other key ingredient in the mix is the back up of state-of-theart support in terms of aftersales and technical expertise delivered through a nationwide network of award-winning service centres, more centres than any other brand in the market. With the introduction of FORDLiive in January 2022, we will harness our vehicles technology to provide enhanced services for our commercial vehicle customers through the utilisation of our vehicles inbuilt modems. FORDLiive is an integrated suite of products and services designed to maximise the productive uptime of connected Ford commercial vehicles reducing vehicle downtime by up to 60%. FORDLiive enables smarter maintenance decisions, faster turnaround and dedicated, data driven technical support. Once registered with FORDLiive, through FordPass Pro or Ford Telematics*, our customers and Transit Service Dealers have real time access to the same smart support information. This means before
Ford E-Transit
