Fleet leasing and management in North America

The future of mobility may be spelled "fleet"

Today, fleet management in North America is a multibillion-dollar industry that is highly consolidated. The top five players combined make up for more than 90 percent of managed vehicles. Tomorrow, the relevance of this market will further increase due to multiple influencing factors.

More and more original equipment manufacturers will put their focus on this business as it is, or it will become an important sales channel for their vehicle sales.

Telecom and tech companies might want to enter the fleet management market to expand their current entertainment, telematics, or mobility platform offerings. The key strategic reason is that the fleet management industry will continue to evolve and become even more IT and data-driven in the future. Deloitte foresees tech companies being in a unique position to take ownership of customer access and data (mobility, payment, etc.), which will be key to monetizing the mobility ecosystem.

In addition, car rental companies and other mobility providers (such as mobility as a service [MaaS] providers) are tapping into fleet management, as this capability is one of the key enablers for nearly all future mobility services.

Consequently, existing fleet management companies need to rethink their position as asset managers towards integrated mobility providers that also offer services not necessarily related to the vehicles themselves. These providers can leverage various strategies to defend their business against new market entrants:

• Increase penetration of their already established customer base, market additional service offerings, and generate additional fee income within a stable customer base. This also includes selling finance and leasing products to customers who currently still own the assets themselves.
• Build expertise in the handling of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and their requirements, and how to manage AV fleets efficiently in large scale.
• Focus on conquering existing key accounts from their competitors.
• Expand their business into new markets and segments, as well as new customers such as government fleets.
• Enhance their current value proposition and footprint by acquiring other fleet management companies. Besides inorganic growth opportunities, this might enable them to further benefit from economies of scale.

The key to being successful will be operational excellence, both internally and in terms of services. Fleet managers need to focus on digitization, process improvement, operational efficiency, and competitive funding strategies. Investments in IT and data analysis capabilities should enable them to sell new and better services to clients like consulting with corporate functional fleet clients to manage overall savings in operational costs.

Either way, to cope with these trends and changes in the industry requires bold strategic choices amidst uncertainty. Fleet management will continue to become a truly global business, despite strong regional characteristics. Deloitte is ready to support your company in deriving the necessary strategies and actions for your journey within this market—regardless of whether your focus is the North American market or if you have a global perspective.