COMPANY PROFILE
2015
Eqstra Fleet Management
+27 (0)11 458 7555 | www.efm.co.za
company profile
Realising potential Editorial: Harriet Pattison
A company that has seen significant growth - from a R200 million revenue business in June 1998, to over R2.4 billion today – Eqstra Fleet Management is in the middle of an exciting and truly innovative project that could help to revolutionise and significantly streamline the growing fleet management industry. Already operational in Africa, the new Integrated Fleet Management System (“IFMS”) will go live in South Africa over the coming months. Managing Director, Murray Price, explains why this new integrated system is so beneficial for the company and its customers…
Eqstra unbundled from Imperial Holdings and listed on the JSE in May 2008. The company’s roots date back to 1984 when Hertz Leasing was set up and then established as a joint venture between Imperial and Nedfin Bank. Four years later Imperial acquired the remaining shareholding and changed its name to Prime Car Leasing. As the first company to introduce proactive managed maintenance in South Africa in 1993, it was later renamed Imperial Fleet Services in 1997. Murray Price explains that Eqstra Fleet Management, pre-2008, was primarily a leasing business with the global financial crisis, it took the decision to diversify the business model away from being a pure leasing business to more of a fleet management non capital intensive business. Enjoying solid success since this decision was made, Price explains the company’s revenue for leasing – initially 95% - is now down to roughly
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50%. “Leasing remains a core component and will remain so but it is now balanced with other fleet services across managed services, insurance, warranties, maintenance plans and road side assistance. “We provide the full spectrum of fleet solutions in an integrated system which makes it quite unique, particularly in South Africa.”
SIGNIFICANT GROWTH Six years ago, Eqstra Fleet Management embarked on a strategy to become a truly integrated fleet management solutions provider and commissioned the development of a practical, in-house integrated solution for its customers and suppliers. Price explains that the benefits of this new system – set to be integrated into its South African operations within the next four months – will undoubtedly place Eqstra Fleet Management on a deserving pedestal in the industry.
Eqstra Fleet Management
“Our strategy is to provide a single point of access to the full range of fleet solutions that will be our key differentiation. We see this giving us huge benefits by having one record that has all the fleet information attached to it in an integrated system. It’s a fairly unique concept and even a large global customer who is operating in 36 countries has told us that they haven’t seen anything like it, anywhere that they operate. “We were surprised to discover how advanced we were from an integration point of view and I think we found ourselves in a position where we needed to differentiate ourselves from the competition and the banks. In the South African market, all the banks have a fleet element and while this is not particularly strong, they are very strong in the leasing aspect,” explains Price.
AN AMBITIOUS PROJECT With four operations already live across Africa, the
South African data base will be fully converted and launched within a three to four month window. Price admits the project has been an ambitious one but the implementation of the new system was important – “We weren’t looking to simply replace our current system with another system.” Of course conversion, technological developments and change on such a large scale takes time to configure and implement, in order to make sure the product or system is 100% effective. Using Microsoft AX 2012 as its system base, Price explains this was the company’s first choice due to its multi-currency approach and global presence. Once in operation, the system will have numerous benefits, perhaps most importantly, it is almost paperless. Price explains that Eqstra has invested significantly in Optical Character Recognition (OCR), meaning all the information will be put through the OCR system to be digitized, input
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company profile directly into the system, so the company will never need to capture an invoice or quote again. The system is certainly efficient with unerring potential, ensuring that all documentation will now be kept in one easy-to-access location. “We have also invested heavily in portals,” explains Price. “Both our customers and suppliers will be able to transact directly through the portal, including functionality for all online authorizations for maintenance services and accident repairs.” In conjunction with the new service portal, Eqstra Fleet Management has developed a smart phone application, with six apps designed initially, including real time vehicle inspections to be done remotely, vehicle service scheduling and direct driver communication. It is clear that a lot of thought and consideration has gone into this new system to ensure it works effectively, efficiently and with its customers and suppliers in mind. In essence, it will integrate a full insurance system, full warranty and full maintenance system with its own tracking system - an all in one portal. Of course, this is a huge industry undertaking – “But this is where we see the differentiation for our business into the future,” Price adds.
GREEN INITIATIVES With a continued focus on sustainability - a growing concern in South Africa following the government’s ongoing schemes for energy efficiency – Eqstra Fleet Management is looking to convert the whole of its commercial fleet with the City of Johannesburg onto compressed natural gases, (CNG). Another ambitious project, Price explains: “We’ve got a pipeline that runs from a Mozambique gas field down to Sasolburg, where they liquefy the gas. We’ve got a take-off point just outside of Johannesburg and we are busy investigating establishing a logistical solution to not only take off the gas, but also to provide them with a solution for the refuelling of gas for their fleet.” Price explains the company is also currently investigating the merits of hydrogen injection, a scheme that could reward huge improvements in terms of cleaner emissions and significant cost savings through reduced fuel consumption. Hydrogen injection takes H20, using power from the vehicle’s alternator converts it into HHO (two parts Hydrogen gas and one part oxygen gas), which is fed back into the vehicles manifold,
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Murray Price | Managing Director helping to improve fuel burn and consumption, without impacting on the vehicle’s warranty.
A BRIGHT FUTURE So, what does the future hold for Eqstra Fleet Management? “Our plan is to continue to grow our main base in South Africa and surrounding regions, such as Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia, where we have an already solid footprint. Although they are smaller markets, we also have operations in Nigeria and Zambia and we aim to expand our footprint further into Africa where there are significant opportunities in terms of providing fleet management.” Helping to add further value, Price explains the benefits and necessity of an efficient tracking system within the business and throughout its fleet as it allows Eqstra Fleet Management to observe driver ability, behaviour, driving times and of course, maintain a strong focus on safety issues. “At EFM we are clear that the real cost driver in our customers’ fleets are their drivers and as such measurement and proactive driver management strategies are critical to reducing fleet operating costs. We see it as a critical element to our future growth across Africa and beyond and our new
Eqstra Fleet Management system will allow us to enter into more emerging markets which we could not enter before,” Price explains. With an experienced consulting team (Eqstra Fleet Consulting), Eqstra Fleet Management doesn’t use the ‘hard-sell’ with its customers – investing sufficient time and money consulting with them, particularly across Africa, to ensure the process supports its customer’s objectives of cost reduction and improved fleet efficiencies. Eqstra Fleet Consulting is embarking on its South African fleet & travel benchmark study which helps to provide companies with sufficient information, allowing them to review their current business travel and allowance strategies. First launched in 2013, Price explains: “We identified a strong need to collect and publish information to support fleet and travel benchmark strategies. We have taken care to ensure that we take cognisance of participant feedback and have made enhancements to this years’ survey for additional information which we will publish to provide an enhanced value add to all participants.” With the initial pilot starting with a participant
sample of 67 large corporate companies and 107 involved last year, Eqstra Fleet Consulting hopes to grow this to 200 for this year’s study which will investigate remuneration structures, travel policies and travel allowances, company car usage, employee travel benefits and fleet management policies. “Ultimately, we want to get into a thought leadership space where we can deliver value to both existing and potential customers. We provide all our customers quarterly value statements – measuring what we’ve achieved in that quarter. Our commitment is to continually display the value we have given to customers,” concludes Price
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“Our new system will allow us to enter into more emerging markets which we could not enter before”
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