LeasePlan belongs to one of the most enduring success stories within the global business originating in the Netherlands. The company specializes in management of vehicle fleets for other companies, and celebrated its 50th year of existence last year. Through its subsidiaries, the company is active in 32 countries worldwide, managing over 1.4 million vehicles for its clients globally. LeasePlan has been providing its services in the Czech Republic since the mid nineties, and has been the market leader here since then. The Czech branch introduced this spring its revolutionary business concept – offering vehicle leasing with guaranteed costs to smaller enterprises through an e-shop.
The new product was named LeasePlan Go. „We would like to address especially smaller enterprises and individual entrepreneurs with our new product,“ explained Mr. Jaromír Hájek, managing director of LeasePlan Česká republika.
Why should the entrepreneurs consider LeasePlan Go?
The main concept behind LeasePlan Go is to take away the problems connected with vehicle operation from the customer. Basically all they need to do is make sure to fill up gas in time, all the other actions are taken care of by LeasePlan – starting with vehicle registration, payment of all legal fees and taxes, arrangement of vehicle insurance, settling the insurance damages, up to the vehicle maintenance, tire change and tire storage. Our new e-shop, available at
www.LeasePlanGo.cz, also contains stock vehicles, in cooperation with the brand dealers, therefore the whole process of acquiring a vehicle for lease can be quite speedy, the customer is set to go after just a few days.
How much does the new product cost?
All our vehicles and services are provided at advantageous conditions, which we are able to get thanks to our strong market position from our suppliers: authorized dealers, repair shops, insurance companies, tire dealers, resellers of car accessories, distributors of fuel cards, etc. It should be stressed that contrary to the loan or to financial lease contract, with operational leasing the customer pays only the difference between the vehicle purchase price and the vehicle residual price at the end of the lease. This difference is divided in the lease installments, which also includes, apart from financing, all other services arranged in the lease contracts. The lease installments do not change in the duration of the contract, and they are guaranteed by LeasePlan for the entire period, which may be between two and five years in total. After the lease contract expires, the customer returns the vehicle and he can start another lease contract immediately.
Can you give us some financial figures?
I can probably demonstrate the advantage of LeasePlan Go in an example: We calculated that outright cash purchase of a car typical for Czech company fleets, which would be a Škoda Octavia 1.6 TDI 77 kW Ambition, costs about CZK 13.000 monthly taking into consideration yearly mileage of 15.000 km’s. Buying the same car though 5-year financial leasing results in monthly installments of about CZK 11.000; in case of bank loan, the installments are about CZK 900 less. However, if such car is arranged through LeasePlan Go on a 5-year contract, it will cost CZK 7.603 including all the services.
LeasePlan Go is aimed at smaller companies. So far, you’ve been focusing on larger fleets. Does this mean a change in your business strategy?
Not at all. Large fleets with tens and even hundreds of vehicles continue to be the major part of our portfolio, and we continue to pay the utmost attention to these customers. Large fleets will generate the largest volumes even in the future, so we’ll keep our focus on this segment. However, just like every other company, LeasePlan is also looking at new target groups of customers. And the SME segment is one of them. SME, small and medium enterprises, as well as entrepreneurs, with fleets of one to ten cars, represent a big potential. The typical customer of LeasePlan Go will be law offices, realtors, smaller IT companies, doctors, financial advisors, as well as tradesmen, for example. The segment of SME is being intensely discussed also in our headquarters, in Almere, the Netherlands. The company management created a new position for the director of SME segment. Taking aim at this group of customers resonates globally in our company.
